Inside Out (9 page)

I clearly remember riding up in the lift with Sir Joseph Lockwood, the chairman who was only in his sixties, but seemed a
nonagenarian to our eyes. He seemed unflappable at yet another quirk of the music industry. He did rather alarm Derek Nice,
the director of our ‘Arnold Layne’ promo, when he suggested that they should install a backdrop of the Tower of London upstairs
and then all the bands could simply come in and mime their hits to a camera before sending them out worldwide. Sir Joseph
was years ahead of his time.

The requisite signature ceremony had been conducted with photographic evidence, apparently a requirement of the suspicious
legal department in case any awkward musicians later claimed the signatures were a fake. We were genuinely excited and pretty
full of ourselves. We had been propelled to a position that a few months before had been just a fantasy. So when asked to
pose for photographs, our sense of euphoria meant that we gleefully fell into gambolling about in the most shameful way.

F
OLLOWING THE
exuberant celebrations after signing with EMI it was time to get down to some serious work. Unlike many other bands, we had
not paid our musical dues. In fact, we had barely put down a deposit. We had invested no serious time on the road, nor spent
a year playing the clubs on the Reeperbahn. Our performances through the autumn of 1966 had taken place at a few favoured
venues and within the comforting cocoon of a largely partisan audience. We had yet to confront the unknown civilisations that
lurked beyond the confines of the psychedelic village.

Transportation was – and probably still is – a major problem for new bands. Borrowing a parent’s car was an option with limited
scope, especially with the almost immediate depreciation caused by cramming it full of drum kits and band members. Acquiring
a van represented by far the biggest capital outlay – yet had none of the glamour of spending a student grant on a new guitar
or bass drum. But though it was possible to muddle through a show with a mishmash of less than perfect or borrowed equipment,
the band – and the ever-increasing pile of equipment – still had to get to the gig, and safely back home afterwards.

Before landing the record deal, travelling outside London had usually been restricted by the limitations of our Bedford van.
We had become the proud owners of this vehicle back in the days of the Tea Set, when we bought it for twenty quid off a dealer’s
forecourt late one Saturday evening. The salesman couldn’t believe his luck – the van was probably awaiting delivery to the
scrapyard. In a fit of generosity he announced that he would sell it ‘wiv new boots and blood’, used-car parlance for a fresh
set of tyres and road tax. The Bedford was unbelievably slow (my old Austin ‘Chummy’ could have overtaken it); its lack of
speed was only surpassed by its unreliability.

We did encounter an additional obstacle when our equipment disappeared. Rick often used to earn an extra fiver by unloading
our equipment at Blackhill’s offices after gigs, but on one occasion he shirked his duties after a particularly late night,
simply leaving the van overnight in Regent’s Park. By the morning, all the expensive, portable gear, such as the PA amp (the
one bought for us by Andrew King) and the guitars had been liberated. The management had no funds left, and no charitable
institution stepped forward to bail us out, so it must be recorded for posterity that my mum, to her eternal credit, lent
us the £200 we needed to replace the most important elements. Rick used to suffer an occasional, momentary twinge of guilt
about the incident, although he never actually offered to make any reparation.

Shortly after the EMI deal, we acquired a Ford Transit, which was seen as a serious status symbol, the Rolls-Royce of band
transportation. When the Transit was introduced by Ford in October 1965, it was in such demand that it was not unknown for
thieves to unload a band’s equipment and then steal the van. The Transit’s specification included a three-litre engine, twin
rear wheels and a modified cabin to take all the equipment in the rear compartment while roadie, lighting man and four band
members travelled in considerable discomfort up in first class. By this time, running a decent van was imperative – because
at last we were getting substantial amounts of work through our agent Bryan Morrison, who’d been so influential in setting
up the EMI deal. Our first encounter with Bryan had taken place during a rehearsal session for ‘Arnold Layne’ at Studio Techniques.
Peter and Andrew
had warned us to expect a visit from a music industry heavyweight, and we awaited his arrival with some trepidation. The door
to the studio swung open, revealing Bryan and his two henchmen. These three characters were clearly part of London’s underworld
rather than underground. No loon pants or kaftans here, but Italian suits and camel-hair coats with velvet collars. Hands
in pockets, the trio fixed us with an impassive gaze – they looked singularly unimpressed at what they saw.

Andrew and Peter had talked to a number of agencies before deciding who to go with, including the well-established Noel Gay
Agency in Denmark Street, where the bookers all wore morning suits. They, however, were asking for 15 per cent to represent
us, while Bryan only wanted 10 per cent. Bryan got the job.

Although Bryan’s sartorial appearance suggested an apprenticeship with a motor dealer, he had in fact attended the Central
School of Art. His office opened as the management for the Pretty Things – whose members included Dick Taylor (who had been
in the embryonic Rolling Stones) and Phil May, two other art school students – and then expanded into publishing and agency
work. By the time we joined he had a substantial roster of artists, among them the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation and Herbie Goins
and the Night-timers, and later he added all the Blackhill acts, including Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band,
the Edgar Broughton Band, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Keith West and Tomorrow, a band which included Steve Howe, later of Yes.

Bryan had a proper music business office at 142 Charing Cross Road, the Tin Pan Alley district. Situated above an all-day
drinking club (a device to circumvent England’s then draconian licensing laws), I think it cost him all of £8 a week. The
walls outside were covered with graffiti professing undying love for one or all of the Pretty Things and inside there was
constant pandemonium. Bryan had dispensed with an intercom and just
shouted at his secretary through the partition walls of his inner sanctum. In fact, everyone shouted, either down telephones
or at each other. It was a far cry from the gentle, genteel world of Blackhill, which was decked out with kaftans and flavoured
with the aroma of patchouli oil.

In addition to his management business, Bryan was the sole agent for some of the key London venues. When managing the Pretty
Things, he had realised the additional advantage of not only managing them but also controlling their bookings. But sometimes,
even Bryan, with all his experience, could be fazed. On one occasion, he had done a friend a favour and agreed to represent
another agency, splitting the commission. At one particular club, he met two brothers who were the principals of the other
agency. During the meeting one of the brothers made his excuses and left ‘to sort out the exclusivity of the agency’ upstairs
with the club manager. The next thing Bryan heard was the sound of a body bumping down the stairs. The other brother also
made his excuses, and went over to add a kick or three to the prostrate body of the luckless club manager. Bryan, who preferred
to persuade his clients with a bottle of fine claret, quietly slipped away. Only later did he learn that the brothers’ surname
was Kray.

Andrew King also encountered the tougher end of the business, though nothing in the Kray league. One agency was alleged to
have dangled the promoter (and later Polydor label boss) Robert Stigwood out of a window to help resolve a dispute, and had
an associate dubbed Pinky, who was reputed to chop the fingers off guitarists who were backward in signing their contract.
The closest Andrew got to that world was going to collect the money for a gig at the Royal College of Art from an agency in
Soho. Andrew arrived, the door opened, and he saw a Christmas party in full flow, complete with big-haired gangster’s molls,
a party obviously funded by our gig money. He said he’d come to collect
the fee for Pink Floyd. ‘Oy, there’s a kid here wants some of our money…’ Everyone swung their attention to Andrew. There
was a brief pause, then the whole room burst out laughing, and the guy at the door peeled the money off a huge wad of notes
from his back pocket. As Andrew turned away, the partying resumed.

The two henchmen who had accompanied Bryan on his visit to Sound Techniques to check us out were his assistants Tony Howard
and Steve O’Rourke. Tony, a Hackney lad, had started his working life as an office boy for the
New Musical Express,
as his original intention had been to make it as a music journalist. Briefly sidetracked into a career as a nightclub croupier
and bingo hall caller, he had come across Phil May of the Pretty Things, who put Tony in touch with Bryan. Tony was persuaded
to come and work for Bryan’s agency.

Steve O’Rourke, after training as an accountant, had worked as a salesman for a pet food company. His employers eventually
dismissed him when they discovered he was racing his company car at Brands Hatch every weekend and delegating his rounds to
other salesmen so he could spend time running a club called El Toro in the Edgware Road. A subsequent three-month stint with
another booking agency provided him with more than sufficient experience for Bryan to consider him fully qualified.

With Bryan as our agent we were finally getting the quantity of gigs we had always wanted. This was, however, something of
a poisoned chalice, as the bookings represented a total mismatch of musicians and audience. This was particularly true of
the Top Rank chain of ballrooms, where audiences only wanted to dance to a soul act or be dazzled by the stars they had seen
on
Top Of The Pops.
Not only did we fail on both counts but the Top Rank also operated a dress code – to keep out undesirables – that required
a jacket and tie, no long hair and
no jeans.
This not only meant we were prevented both from going to the bar for a drink and
mingling with the natives, but also that our own small band of supporters would never have made it beyond the doorman.

For the Top Rank audience, watching Pink Floyd must have been a confusing experience. With no TV exposure until ‘See Emily
Play’ was released, we were a totally unknown quantity to almost everybody there. The one Top Twenty hit we had had, ‘Arnold
Layne’, was not at all representative of the rest of our set, and in any case had received limited radio play and no airing
on TV. One promoter came up to us after the show and said, ‘What a shame, boys, if only you could get some decent songs…’

Confronted with an hour of weird and frightening music, and a half-invisible, un-screamworthy band, their reactions ranged
from the uninterested to the violent. This was our first exposure to punters who were not guaranteed to be supportive, and
if we hadn’t had an agent to insist on receiving the cheques in advance, we probably would never have got paid at all. Luckily
there were enough new venues to keep us in work. The concept of rebooking was unknown, so we just kept moving one step ahead
of the incomprehension we left in our wake. In 1967 we couldn’t even rely on a sympathetic student audience. At the time there
was no university circuit as such, partly because there were fewer provincial universities, and partly because organising
gigs was apparently not deemed a suitable recreational activity for students. Consequently we were sentenced to working the
rounds of clubs and ballrooms.

A glance at a list of the gigs we played in 1967 reveals a sudden increase from twenty gigs in the latter part of 1966 to
well over two hundred the following year. This does not include our first tour in America, trips to Europe for TV promotions,
or the time required to record three singles and an album. Not surprisingly all these gigs tend to merge into a featureless
amalgam of dimly lit dressing rooms and A-roads leading to the home straight of the
M1 from Birmingham back to London. The Blue Boar services at Watford Gap were where all the bands stopped off, and crushed
velvet trousers outnumbered truckers’ overalls.