One Train Later: A Memoir (10 page)

Zoot and I play around in the local scene with a group that comes and goes depending on the gig, but after a while-and a round of church halls, women's institutes, and village community centers-it feels as though we need a bigger arena. We have to go to where the action is, and that means London. I try to talk the others into all of us going up to London together, but we don't have a consensus. Some think it too competitive, too risky; we wouldn't stand a chance. But for me the way is clear: we have to go or be doomed to the Haggersley women's institute or the notice board outside of a church hall in Tolpuddle, with our names scrawled in biro on a small dog-eared piece of paper.

One night we are playing out at Ossemsley Manor in the New Forest, and my desire to move on presents itself in the shape of the manager of Alexis Korner's band. He emerges from the dark with a rattling glass of scotch in his hand and an invitation for Zoot to join the band in Londonhe's impressed with Zoot's singing. This is quite a coup; Alexis is on the BBC and already holds a legendary reputation on the English music scene as a bluesman. I feel threatened because Zoot and I were planning to go to London together to start our own band, so I attempt a bit of emotional blackmail by saying that if he's going up to London to be with Alexis, I'll go with him and wait until it's time to get started with our original plan.

Zoot doesn't seem to mind this idea, agreeing that it's important that he have his own outfit rather than just being someone else's singing turkey. I nod sagely and we make the decision to leave for the city. Somewhat nervously I have told my parents that I am going to live in London and be a musician. To my surprise and relief, I don't get a lot of argument; they see that I am determined on this course and don't try to stop me. I imagine their talking together in private: "Musn't stand in his way." "It's what he's always wanted." "He's a determined little bugger."

On the morning I leave, my mother stands on the pavement outside the house, her face a wrestling match between composure and anguish. Although I am light and casual about it, this is it: I am leaving home, never to return. She tells me to eat, be careful, and write as soon as I arrive. I give her one last hug and, with a ripping of the umbilical cord, sling my suitcase and guitar into the trunk. She bursts into tears and I pile into a secondhand Vauxhall Victor with Zoot and our friend Phil the hairdresser.

Five

We arrive at Alexis's house in Hampstead to hear how Zoot's illustrious future will go. It rather sounds like one gig as a tryout and there are no accommodations, but we are advised to try the Finchley Road area, somewhere south of where we are presently enjoying cups of tea in creamy Hampstead comfort. As we have just struggled in from the West Country with no clue about London, we find this prospect daunting. But we down the last half inch of tea from bone china, utter thank-yous, and project our fear and our bodies out into the strange and unfamiliar streets.

We trudge about, looking for somewhere to begin our life in London or even a friendly face that will take us in, but it seems hopeless. After knocking on endless doors and staring at hostile signs that say no vacancies, no blacks, no Indians, no dogs, no cats, we finally get a ray of mercy from Mrs. O'Donoghue, an Irish widow. It's a one-room flat on the second floor of her terrace house, the sole problem being that there is only one bed and three of us. Mrs. O'Donoghue mutters to herself that she shouldn't really, but we look so desperate, so cold, poor pets. Maybe she sees it as an act of charity, but she makes the sign of the cross and we enter the stygian gloom of her boardinghouse.

We can just make out that the walls are awash with religious icons of the Catholic variety, and it feels as if we have just volunteered for the priesthood rather than coming to London to be profligate musicians. There's nothing much we can do-it's this or a park bench, or return to Bournemouth with our tails between our legs-so we tiptoe into the small room, almost choking on the odor of mothballs. There is a large bed with a purple candlewick bedspread, and on the wall, buried in a sea of floral wallpaper, a sign about no smoking, drinking, spitting, or swearing.

After much short-straw-pulling about who doesn't get the dreaded middle spot, we retire for the night. Since the bed takes up all but a few inches of the room, there is no floor to sleep on. For about half an hour there is a great deal of loud fake snoring and trumpetlike fart sounds made from mouths on wrists as we desperately attempt to keep the humor high in case there's even the slightest hint of homosexuality. Above our heads-radiating the light of God-a plastic Virgin watches over us while we sleep frozen and corpselike, lest we touch another man's flesh.

Zoot performs two or three gigs with Alexis, one of which I witness, and then his gigs dribble to zero. One night we go to see Alexis in a trio setting that takes place on the Finchley Road in what might be called a tavern. A low dark room, it has a small stage at the far end with a few wooden tables covered in cardboard beer mats and large heavy ashtrays. The wall has an equestrian theme, with paintings a la George Stubbs of prizewinning horses that seem superior to the customers below. The band is Alexis on guitar and vocals, Jack Bruce on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums. Alexis sings Chicago and country blues and plays some bottleneck guitar. He is one of the first Englishmen to attempt authentic blues, and although he is not a natural singer, he puts it over with a certain amount of raw conviction. Something like "ooochy kooooochie maaaan-baaaack dooooor baaaby" surges forth from Alexis's throat with a guttural roar as he whips his bottleneck up and down the neck of his guitar with an intense alien chromaticism that covers every note and quarter tone in the book. At this early point in my musical life-despite my exposure to American folk music as a thirteen-year-old with the Midnighters-I am not yet steeped in the blues. This otherworldly racket confuses me and makes me nervous. On the Finchley Road among advertisements for Watneys brown ale and weary voices asking for a pint of bitter, it rings out like the voice of the devil-and I wonder if I have got it all wrong.

But leaning against the bar with half a pint of lager and time and a packet of crisps, I attempt a fake London sophistication, pretending to understand and dig it-although I am much more comfortable with a jazzier version of the blues and the virtuoso guitar playing of Wes Montgomery. Alexis comes over to meet us and is an utterly charming man with a deep Oxbridge accent who radiates only good vibes in our direction, and for a moment he lightens the gloom. But despite Alexis's good cheer, we feel our enthusiasm flagging. Compared to these weary beer-stained surroundings and the dismal weight of the metropolis, Bournemouth seems like a simple sunny planet and it is tempting to turn and flee. But we don't feel like running home just yet, although we are faced with the grim truth that we are without a gig, three men to a bed, and close to penniless. We decide to stick it out and get our own place; after that Herculean task is accomplished, we can try and restart the band. Phil the hairdresser gives up and heads south. Zoot and I are now a duo with no bass, no drums, no future. There is nothing but the locked hearts and locked minds of the great sprawling mass that's called London.

We begin scouring the Evening Standard for a flat to rent, a hole in the wall, or shelter. At the other end of London-in Ludgate, to be precise-are two men whose dreams coincide nicely with our own. Mr. Smith and Mr. Gardner-Brown, both pushing thirty-five, are two business partners who seem to cradle a fantasy to become real estate barons, and they are starting into this venture by advertising for tenants. We go to meet them one afternoon at the flat. The address, 11 Gunterstone Road, West Kensington W 14.

In the tea-stained penumbra that passes for light in London, we sit with them in the front room of the basement. The afternoon is so leaden and overcast that it is difficult to make them out and it's as if we are talking to silhouettes. But through the gloom Gardner-Brown (in a dark blue pinstripe and gripping a briefcase) and Smith (in a grey charcoal number with a crisp white handkerchief poking from his breast pocket), speak in precise, clipped voices redolent of topiary, manicured lawns, and freshly washed poodles.

We attempt to discuss terms-how to come up with the vast three months' advance rent-but get the distinct feeling that we are not quite what they are looking for. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that neither Zoot nor I has a job or enough money to rent past the first week. We ask them if we might get back to them tomorrow and in the evening put in a furtive call to Colin Allen, our drummer from Bournemouth, who agrees to drive up to London, put his savings from De Havilland aircraft down as the deposit, and join the band. We return the next afternoon to try and take it one step further with Smith and Gardner-Brown, who don't appear to know quite what they are doing and seem slightly intimidated by scruffy musicians. But nevertheless, they seem eager to move along the road toward real estate riches and we at least are a start. We come to terms, they accept one month's rent rather than three, and like Alice down the rabbit hole, we're in.

We now have a home, and a drummer, but we still need a bass player. We ask around and are put in touch with Paul Williams, a singer who doesn't play an instrument but says that he will learn the bass if that's what we want. We do, and in a remarkably short time-being a natural musician-he is playing decently enough for it to work. We rehearse the songs we already know, the Ray Charles stuff and some other R&B hits, and through a friend of Paul's get an audition spot at one of the West End's premier clubs, the Flamingo, in Soho.

On a Sunday afternoon the crowd is sparse: a handful ofAmerican GIs, some Jamaicans, and a few assorted punters who look as if they haven't left from the night before. The room reeks of alcohol and cigarettes, and even the walls seem hungover. Yet we are full of adrenaline and play with all the fire and innocence that we have in these early days; as a result, we get a vociferous reception that makes us stare at one another in excitement.

The emcee for the afternoon show is Johnny Gunnell, who runs the club with his brother Rik. As we come off the stage into the dressing room at the side, which will become another home away from home, Johnny tells us-in a way we will come to recognize-that he sees a rosy future ahead for us: "You are the new house band." "You will replace Georgie Fame." "You start next weekend." We can hardly believe it. We have been in London for five minutes and have landed a plum gig in the West End; in fact, we have taken it right from under the noses of all the other London bands who want to play there.

The probable truth is that we have the sound and the music alright, but we are green and can be hired for next to nothing, which suits Johnny. One day he tells us that he's had the Stones on the stage and paid them four shillings and sixpence (about fifty cents by today's reckoning), but we don't care-we have a gig and we're here.

London, with its speed, noise, dirt, concrete, and multiracial society, is shocking. I wander around Soho through streets filled with prostitutes, betting shops, bars, private drinking clubs, and exotic food smells, trying to get used to the idea that this fast, cynical place is now my home. Security comes from being in the band, coming from the same town, and having moved here together. But gradually we settle into it and after a while I can't imagine being anywhere else.

As we gain popularity from our steady gig at the Flamingo we play six or seven nights a week and are able to add a couple of saxophones to the band. This regular work eventually provides enough money for Zoot to move upstairs to the ground-floor flat with his new girlfriend, Ronni, a tough and outspoken little Scot who acts as the voice of sanity, the shaper of events, and the mother hen in the madness of the next few years.

Our show, Zoot Money and the Big Roll Band, is a fast-paced rabblerousing set of R&B featuring the songs of Ray Charles, the Isley Brothers, Rufus Thomas, and James Brown. Zoot is a great blues shouter/R&B singer with a natural flair for comedy and showmanship. From the stage he heckles the audience with insults and jibes about playing in the graveyard, etc., until he goads them into a full and heated response. At this point being in a band is about having a good time rather than being moody, artistic, and introspective. We are supposed to be entertainers, and the idea of calling ourselves artists is not on the dial yet. Artists are referred to as "arteeeests" with a French accent, and with a smirk you think of Mr. Teezy Weezy-hairdresser to the stars.

As our reputation grows we begin playing around the country and start an endless round of gigs that have us locked up in a Cominer van, crisscrossing England on a daily basis. But we always return to the Flamingo and the sessions known as the all-nighters. These run from eleven P.M. till seven A.M. on the weekends and are almost Shakespearean in the way that tragedy and comedy play out in front of the stage and the dark recesses of the club. They become the fixed point, the true north of our universe.

The Flamingo on Wardour Street is directly opposite Garrard Street, a real Chinatown without the huge crowds of tourists (which belong to the future). It is seedy and run-down, and I enjoy walking through the alien smells, the odor of spice and rotting fish heads-the babble of language and sharp edge of threat. The Flamingo has a small door and two flights of dingy narrow stairs. It's an inky black pit with a small bar on one side, and the stage at the far end has a presence, as if music is being played even when musicians are absent. At each side of the stage there is a dank little hole laughingly called a dressing room, and the alternating bands get one each.

We always favor the one located at stage right, with its green paint, graffiti-covered walls, and broken overstuffed couch. It's a submarine space with nowhere to hang your clothes, be private, sit in meditation, study a racing form, scratch your ass, or stare at the wall, but this pit is where everyone wants to be. Here, out of sight, drugs are swallowed, sniffed, and snorted; booze downed; and the occasional fuck had. Johnny Gunnell reigns in this small kingdom, and these rooms signify the racetrack, the dogs, pubs, beer, hookers, pimps, violence, the East End, and people doing anything to stay alive. Maybe because of my own roots in the East End, I adjust without too much trouble, but unstated and lingering in the air is the unspoken word that "you are the band, and as long as you are the band, everything will be alright. You supply the sounds, Sunshine, but don't step out of line or I will do you a violence." The Gunnells preside like underworld princes and are reputed to have associations with the Kray twins, the notorious gangster brothers from the East End of London, and behind the Gunnells' sardonic repartee there is the perfume of extreme measures. Rik is the older brother and is the heavy. He likes to joke with us, but one night in the dressing room he picks me up in a bear hug and doesn't let me out for slightly too long while he whispers in my ear, "Wanna play with Uncle Rik, Sunshine?" and I feel that he might just break every bone in my body.