White Bicycles (20 page)

Hoppy had his own artist, Michael English, who had worked for
IT
and the Free School. In a typical 1967 solution, we introduced them, shut them in a room and told them not to come out until they had designed London’s first psychedelic poster. It worked a treat: they adopted the nom de plume ‘Hapshash and the Coloured Coat’, turned out over thirty posters in eighteen months, made an LP and eventually went their separate ways to successful careers as painters.

Hapshash’s first, a huge gold field with a giant peppermint-swirled UFO across the middle, might be my favourite, but their collected works constitute a particular English style of psychedelia – celebrated with an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2000. The silk-screen process was uneconomical – no cost reduction as the quantity increased – but it altered the face of London. Thieves were spotted with steam kettles, peeling them off fences. The protection racket that controlled the sites began selling instead of fly-posting them, so we set up a short-lived poster marketing business to capitalize on their popularity.

When you consider that ceilidh bands and green-skirted Irish teenagers had been the Blarney Club’s standard fare, Mr Gannon handled the influx of freaks (we preferred the term to ‘hippies’) remarkably well. On one of our first evenings, he took me aside for ‘a little word’. He had a lovely brogue and there was a lilt in his voice when he said that he wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but he had a feeling ‘there’s a few people smokin’ dope in here’. The downward melody of the ‘o’ in ‘dope’ I recall being particularly charming.

‘Well, Mr Gannon, I can’t say this with absolute assurance, but I certainly hope you are mistaken.’

‘Well, that’s as may be, and that’s as may not be, Joe. But all the same, I think it might be a good idea to turn on the fan.’

On another occasion, a stranger asked whether we would like to present the British premiere of the New York underground film
Flaming Creatures
by Jack Smith. I remembered reading about it in Jonas Mekas’s film column in the
Village Voice
and knew it was considered a classic. About 2 a.m., I made the announcement and watched as the images unfolded on the screen. Women dressed like flamenco dancers posed languorously on a bed as strange music played. Eventually a skirt was lifted to reveal a most unfeminine organ. I was horrified to see that Mr Gannon had left his post by the soft-drink stand and was staring at the screen. I assured him that I had had no idea about the content of the film when I agreed to show it. (These were the days of the Lord Chamberlain’s office, when licences for public entertainment could be withdrawn for four-letter words or nudity.) ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it, Joe,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen far worse than that in the navy.’

Besides the Floyd, we booked the Exploding Galaxy dance troupe, avant-garde jazz outfits such as Sun Trolley, and ten-minute comedies by the People Show. Yoko Ono cast her
Bottoms
movie mostly from UFO audiences, who signed up for it in a book by the door. One night she asked for a contact microphone on a long lead, an amp and a stepladder. When the place was packed we cleared some space in front of the stage for the ladder, taped the mic to a pair of scissors, plugged it in and cranked up the volume. Yoko emerged from the dressing room leading a beautiful girl in a paper dress who smiled serenely atop the ladder as Yoko cut the garment off her, the amplified scritch-scritch of the scissors booming across the club.

A week after his agency took the Pink Floyd record deal away from me, Tony Howard came down to see the club and have a chat. We grabbed a couple of bottles of Mr Gannon’s synthetic orange soda and repaired to a tiny alcove off the main ballroom. The Floyd were becoming more and more famous, getting bookings all over the country; Tony said they couldn’t continue to work for £50 on a Friday night in central London. ‘But they’re only getting higher fees because of the publicity generated by UFO!’ I spluttered. If we paid more, we would have to raise the ten-shilling admission price. Tony suggested that this was my problem, not the Floyd’s. We finally agreed a compromise: they would play two more gigs for £75 each, then, regardless of how big they were in June, they would come back and do a final show for the same fee. I envisioned it as I sat there: they would be the hottest group in England by June and UFO would have them; we’d get huge publicity and a packed house. It turned out as predicted, but it was a hollow triumph: by June, Hoppy would be in jail and Syd present in body but absent in spirit.

Now I needed both to replace the Floyd at UFO and to find a band for Witchseason Productions. The Soft Machine were perfect for UFO, but as recording artists, they didn’t convince me. The name, taken from a William Burroughs novel, epitomized their problem: it was trying just that little bit too hard. The Floyd’s mysterious plundering of the Carolina backwoods for theirs was more opaque and offhand.

I loved drummer Robert Wyatt’s hoarse vocals and Kevin Ayers was an alluring songwriter whom girls adored, but I had trouble with Daevid Allen’s hectoring presence as lead vocalist. Later that year I was hired to bring some ‘Arnold Layne’ production magic to their first single but it sank without trace. Thirty years later, after Robert’s backbreaking fall transformed him into a sedentary but profound
chansonnier
, I had the honour of releasing his catalogue of recordings on my Hannibal label.

In March, a jazz buff named Victor Schonfield tipped me off about a group playing in a bar in the Shepherd Market red-light district. In a tiny room a dozen customers nursed cocktails while an organ-based trio pounded out a jazzy fusion. After a few choruses, out popped Arthur Brown in a Merlin cape and make-up with his head on fire. He began and ended his set with a raucous but catchy hymn to the ‘God of Hellfire’. He quickly became a UFO favourite. I pondered trying to sign Arthur, but decided he was a one-song wonder. I was right about the limited repertoire, but that one song got to the top of the British charts a few months later.

I billed Arthur with comedy surrealists the Alberts. We had already established the connection between psyche-delia and Dada humour with visits by the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band. I liked to think this demonstrated that UFO was more than just an outpost of the revolution, and the diverse entertainments never seemed to put anyone off. From LPs of Pakistani classical singing by the Ali Brothers between live sets, to the W. C. Fields shorts we showed in the middle of the night, the audience lapped it all up.

About 2 a.m. one night I was accosted at the entrance by a little guy in a flared mod suit. His hair was blond and short and his gigantic speed-dilated pupils were further magnified by large thick spectacles. He talked so fast I could barely follow what he had to say, but it was clear he wanted a free pass into the club. His name was Jeff Dexter, resident DJ at Tiles, an all-night mod club in Oxford Street, and his visit was portentous. When Jeff entered UFO, he began a metamorphosis that would eventually transform him into an elder statesman of flower power. He was like the first swallow of spring, a harbinger of a general migration. In the coming months, the curious from other tribes would come to find out what all the fuss was about. When ‘Arnold Layne’ hit the charts, the floodgates opened.

A new vein of talent was opened up for me by the once feared Tony Howard. He offered a peace treaty: I would tell him the groups I wanted and he would do the negotiating, splitting commission with the group’s agency. He had a clear sense of the cachet adhering to a UFO booking and introduced me to established bands keen to jump on the psychedelic bandwagon. This wasn’t as cynical as it sounds: many of them had been transformed by their experience of drugs and their music had changed as a result. Gigs by Tomorrow and the Pretty Things were the first fruits of this new relationship.

As the club’s popularity grew, Hoppy and I tried hard to maintain the original atmosphere. We still showed Kurosawa movies before dawn; Jack the Nudist from Watford (clothed for the evening) continued to project his light show in the corner while people tripped and danced around him; our security staff still sold some of the best acid in London; the corridor between Mr Gannon’s soda stand and the dance floor remained crowded with tables offering leaflets on political prisoners, the legalization of drugs and the upcoming porno festival in Amsterdam, while celebrities, journalists, ‘straights’ and converts appeared in ever greater numbers. UFO became a crucial spot in the London music scene and Hoppy and I were able to survive off the proceeds.

UFO’s success became the object of envy. There was a feeling in the Underground that it should belong to the community, rather than to any individuals. UFO money certainly flowed into the scene as the staff – all freaks – were well paid and
IT
’s stall raked in plenty of cash each week. Any cause, no matter how radical, was welcome to proselytize on the premises. But when
IT
had a financial crisis following a raid by the Obscene Publications Squad and it was felt that UFO ought to provide rescue funding, I resisted and Hoppy didn’t disagree. We passed a bucket, made pleas over the PA system and pre-paid our advertising bill a few weeks in advance.

Hoppy and some
IT
staff organized the 14-Hour Technicolour Dream at Alexandra Palace in April. I thought them a bit ambitious, but publicized it at UFO and hoped they didn’t lose their shirts. I don’t think much money was made, but none was lost and the event got huge publicity plus royal visits from Lennon and Hendrix. The gigantic hilltop building looked fantastic all lit up that night. Next morning I lay outside on the grass surrounded by crowds streaming away in the bright sunshine. There was no stopping this juggernaut; the Underground was becoming the mainstream.

An early visitor from the Soho music business world was Denny Cordell: he loved the crowd and invited me to his office to hear his latest production. It was by an unknown group with incomprehensible lyrics and was based on a sedate piece of eighteenth-century chamber music. I immediately booked Procol Harum to play UFO the evening ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’ was released. There was something familiar about the strange words. When Denny introduced me to Keith Reid, the lyricist, it all came back. He had sauntered into the Elektra offices a year before looking for a deal based solely on some typewritten verses. I found him amiable but crazy. Who ever signed someone on the basis of a few stanzas of doggerel? (Let’s see now, that’s Steve Winwood, Lovin’ Spoonful, Cream, Pink Floyd, the Move, ‘Fire’ and ‘Whiter Shade Of Pale’ that slipped through my fingers…)

I also loved Cordell’s next single, ‘Say You Don’t Mind’ by Denny Laine and the Electric String Quartet. UFO provided them with some of the very few gigs they ever played. Laine was one of the era’s great singers, immortalized by his vocal on the Moody Blues’ ‘Go Now’, and eventually successful singing harmony with McCartney in Wings, but he never got the recognition he deserved. His amplified strings may have started stable-mate Bev Bevan thinking about ELO.

Tony Howard had the idea for a ‘milkman’s matinée’ audition slot at 5 a.m. One of the first to be given this opportunity was a Dublin blues band called The People. Their manager – an Irish photographer doing it for a lark – appeared around eleven, all anxious and speedy. He thought the starting time on the contract must be a misprint: they were outside in the van and ready to go on straight away. I explained the deal to him and his face fell. He asked for the £5 fee in advance and I said they had to play first. I did agree to his last request: that someone bang on the side of their van at 4.30 as an alarm call. They had no money to do anything in the intervening period but sleep.

A short while later, a man in a tweed jacket, white shirt and tie came down the stairs. I had met him before: Mike Jeffreys, manager of Jimi Hendrix and the Animals. He complimented me on the size of the crowd; as a former club owner in Newcastle, he knew about crowds. (As a former Newcastle club owner he also knew about a great many other things, best explained by renting a DVD of
Get
Carter
.) When I told him Soft Machine and Arthur Brown were on the bill that night, he said, ‘I just signed the Soft Machine for management and Arthur Brown is signed to Lambert and Stamp.’

He was turning to leave when I added: ‘And there’s an Irish blues band at five a.m.’

He spun round and looked at me intently. ‘Irish? Do they have Irish passports?’ I assumed they must, since they came from Dublin. Jeffreys found a spot against a wall and stood there, with only an occasional trip to the toilet or the soda stand, for six hours. In our audience, a guy in serious glasses, coat and tie seemed the most outlandish of all.

The People were good and got the sleepy crowd up on its feet. The leader, Henry McCullough (also later with Wings), harangued and charmed them, the approach was original, the band was tight. They got two encores before we started shooing people out into the street. Because we’d had such a good night, I gave their manager two crisp £5 notes. A few minutes later, he sought me out again. ‘Look, Joe, can you give me a hand? There’s some nutter in the dressing room upsetting the lads. He says he manages Jimi Hendrix and he wants them to open for him on a tour to America starting next month. Will you help me get rid of the guy?’

When I told him that Jeffreys actually did manage Hendrix, he looked at me wide-eyed for a second, then dashed back to the tiny dressing room. Jeffreys had lined up a US tour starting after the Monterey Pop Festival and needed an opening act but hated the idea of giving a break to someone else’s band. He had the further problem of ‘exchanges’: you couldn’t get a work permit in either country without a balancing number of dates being played at comparable salaries by musicians travelling in the opposite direction. Alternatively, you could find Irish musicians who fell outside the agreement and you could change their name from The People to Eire Apparent.

A decade later I was running a film distribution company and wanted to release a documentary about Stiff Records and their post-punk line-up of stars such as Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and Madness. I went to see Dave Robinson, the infamous boss of the label, and discovered that he was that same Dublin photographer. The American tour with Jeffreys had provided him with a music business education. As for the film, despite other offers, he had decided to let me have it ‘seeing as how you gave us that extra
foiver
’.