Wednesday 24 April 2019
It all started when I was a teenager. I discovered that if you just assumed you could connect with someone ‘famous,’ you usually could. Of course, those were different days. And somehow I was born not being too awestruck by authority or whatever. I treat everyone more or less the same. Now, people in authority sometimes get bent out of shape when I call them Jenny instead of Dr Smith, or suggest I’m a peer of any description. But at least in those young days almost every ‘famous’ person I met was happy to be treated ‘normally.’
My first famous person is probably Roger Moore. He was a guest at a Unilever Christmas party for employees’ children – and I was one. He wasn’t yet a big star but he had some national following from ‘Ivanhoe,’
Yes, this dates me! While all the other children flocked around to get an autograph, I chose, as Roger bent down to connect with our smallness, to ask him, ‘Is it your real hair?’ (For those days of short back and sides, his was rather long as Ivanhoe. He laughed and said ‘Touch it and see,’ so I gave it a tug. This probably cemented my future as a pretend groupie.
Skip forward some years.. I’d go to the BBC shows at the Playhouse Theatre in London and let it be known I’d like to go backstage. No question was ever asked. I’ve forgotten some of these adventures but I do remember meeting Tommy Roe, who seemed remarkably tall, and my girl crush, Connie Francis
who sat looking perfect and beautiful on a make-up chair. I must have spoken to her but I don’t remember a word.
My first real experience of being so close to anyone was courtesy of three Greek sisters that I met who knows where but it must have been at another concert/BBC performance with Bobby Vee who i absolutely adored.
The sisters were dark and mysterious to me. They had black glossy high beehives, wore make up and trendy for the times clothing. They lived in also-mysterious Chalk Farm in a house with high ceilings and many rooms. One of them was their bedroom with its old fashioned dressing table full of toiletries and makeup. I wanted to be them. Instead I was a rather shy looking middle class Jewish girl, not yet brave enough to flaunt a thing. I ate at their house, food I’d never had with some biscuits that had no flavour but they gobbled up.
One evening, maybe that same one I met them, we left a Bobby Vee performance and stalked him to his hotel, by following in a taxi, and managing not to lose sight of him. I’m pretty sure we caught him before he disappeared to his room. He was an emerging star and I’m sure he loved it. In fact a bit later he told a reporter about the mad experience and the brief story showed up in a music mag. Yet the details are lost to me now.
On his next visit to London, he was with the Crickets. This thrilled me. I’d been a huge Buddy Holly star and these boys were legends. In I went to the dressing room, as I would, to chat to them. My only memory is of Jerry and how incredibly handsome he seemed. And of knowing I was on camera in the studio audience later, of Bobby signing my arm and telling me to be sure to wash it some time, and him remembering the taxi stalking event.
Skip forward to 1963 (I think it was) – again at the Playhouse. The Beatles had arrived in London and there I was. We had arrived early. And there they were. I remember there was John and George at least, maybe Paul. But I had eyes only for George. I remember him as skinny, shaggy, and unshaven. There was a dear in the headlights look to them all, even defiant John. London was probably a dream for them. They’d made it! I got autographs and I took photos. Long gone.
There are many memories of ‘meeting’ people. Each time I fearlessly got backstage or on stage, got into rehearsals. Tugging the Kinks’ Dave Davies’ (or was it Ray) hair (shades of Roger) – the longest I’d seen to date…Chatting to the Hollies…Making prank calls to the Beatles road manager…Making a real call to Freddy (and the Dreamers)…And the Rolling Stones – going to see them in my then local concert venue, a small place. Squeezing past a runty, ragged Mick Jagger, dazed and probably stoned – I was young and innocent but I knew about drugs… Telling a pimply Keith Richards he looked like George Harrison and seeing his blush…Talking to a stunned Charlie Watts who seemed not to know where he was… A word with lofty Brian Jones and self-assured Bill Wyman, who seemed so much older. Telling Alan Price what a brilliant musician he was. Staring up at Long John Baldry, with his tagalong act Rod (the Mod) Stewart, his hair high and spiky.
I got Keith Richard’s phone number and address. I wrote to him. And suprise, a reply arrived. A long letter full of what he was doing. I was also told I had a gift for letter writing and perhaps he was intrigued. I don’t know why he wrote back but I tried it again and this time another letter. He told me they were going to Liverpool. And so was I! So I told him how to get to the Cavern. Amazingly, they got there when I was there too. It was their turn to be deer in the headlights – the Cavern! Girls flocked around Brian, who said he had no pen, so I went to find one. I felt like I belonged somehow, although I have no idea how or why. Back in London, Keith wrote again and mentioned seeing me in the Cavern. I had asked him if they might record Mona, my favourite Rolling Stones stage piece. He told me it was special to them too but they had a chance to record a Beatles song, which could be their big break. And so it was.
And suddenly they were out of reach. Not before I’d phoned a few times, been ‘dahling’ed by Mick more than once. I still can’t like him.
There’s so much more. My adventures in Liverpool with groups that didn’t really make it out of there. Earl Preston & The TT’s (really Georgie whose basement I slept in one night) and who introduced me to my long still-friend, Anne… The Kirbys (then the Panthers). The Hideaways, who I just loved especially Judd Another penpal relationship with Chris (Crummey) Curtis of the Searchers, whose mother was so delighted to meet me.
In Soho, London watching Zoot Money, Georgie Fame, and The Who, a new band then. Spotting Keith Moon in Waterloo Station then unbelievably bumping into him, spilling a cup of hot noodle soup on his shoes but happily not his buttery tan leather jacket…I felt a mix of horror and delight.
More memories of Liverpool, finding my good friend, Elsie (now Elsa), her friends Lynda, and their friend Freda (now Frieda) who happened to be the Beatles Fan Club secretary. She and Anne are pretty much who I have left from those days. Elsa went on to work with Frieda for ‘The Lads.’ Sitting with her and hearing her talk about George like he was just any old lad (and of course he was!) still makes me smile. I try very hard not to talk about them but I’m always conscious she has a connection with music history that I can’t dream of.
A few years ago the Hideaways Judd Lander (who went on to some fame as the person playing that iconic harmonica on Karma Chameleon and more) came to a dinner I was at with Elsa and seeing him again – even this older, fatter, version – was magical for me. For Elsa he was just Judd, an old friend.
I wasn’t that sort of groupie. Never could be. I was young, I had no experience of men or much else. I could never have caught one of their eyes and wouldn’t have known what do had that happened.
These memories are warm for me.