18. the hat trick
You can't leave musicians alone for a minute.
I said one of my jobs in the band was to keep the others rehearsing. You might indulge the odd jam, even if it led to Without Moses. But you don't want to miss a get-together, because you never knew what might come out of it.
For the hospital gig, one of the tracks we added to the set came from Sticky Fingers. That's one of the great quartet of Stones albums straddling 1970, but it's got a couple of fillers. Including this one. Seven minutes long. A really deep fill.
Can't you hear me knocking gives musicians and vocalists something to do that isn't twelve-bar. Good for our musicians, not so great for our vocalist or audience.
It starts with a short and aggressive guitar riff punctuated by the drums. The vocals are in your face too, though they change to a singalong chorus. Soon the entire track comes to a halt with the last line, then morphs into an endless samba jam. What was I supposed to do on stage during that?
The discussion got quite heated. Patrick and Bernie had decided on this song, and Bill liked his part in it, so I had to give in and learn it too. You'd think shouting into a mike was something I'd be keen on, rather than trying to sing, but the last thing we needed was another Stones number - especially one you couldn't dance to. Nobody was going to enjoy watching us play a samba badly while I tried to move to it.
This is crazy. You haven't thought it through.
Listen, sunshine (Bernie had his forceful hat on), it's in. I think he even jabbed a finger at me.
I told him we were supposed to be a dance band.
Well, said Pat, this has got a good square beat.
That became another of Bernie's phrases. Any time something didn't work, he'd say it had a good square beat. We still smile about it now.
One thing and another, I knew I'd have to resign myself to spouting lyrics about cocaine eyes and a speed-freak jive as if I'd ever experienced them and anyone would want to hear about it.
Can't you hear me fuming.
*
So here's Bill being proud of this band he's in. And that's after just a couple of shows, one for his guitarist's mates, the other for kids with mental issues. Let's see what our next audience was like. Once again it was me who found one in an unlikely venue. Bill stayed at my dad's because the next gig was only two days away.
I'd asked someone's mum.
*
Claire de Rouen wasn't your typical mother. She just wasn't mumsy at all.
Go back to the summer term of 1970. Sports day at the prison-camp boarding school, and I'm winning the junior high jump.
Not a hard thing to do. It was a very small school and I was in my last year as a junior, which made me older than most. The height I cleared, a miserable four foot five, was still two inches more than the winner a year later - which shows how small a school this was. Four-five was the winning height at my grammar school - two years earlier. I came fifth then, after second place the year before, which had got me into the Reading Schools championships, where I finished third on countback.
Reason I didn't progress: I didn't grow strong, but mainly wrong technique. I never tried the scissors, which most kids used, let alone the straddle. I just ran straight at the bar and sort of hurdled it, landing on my right hip in the sand. Four foot five wasn't bad with that style (five foot as a senior was better) - but you're not going to set records with it.
When high jumpers start their preparation for an attempt, they flex up and down on their toes, to make themselves a bit taller and the bar look lower. I used to do some preliminary skipping - which caught the eye of a well-dressed woman behind us on the grass.
She had a light summer dress, though what I mainly remember is the wide straw hat to keep out the sun. She seemed to be smiling a me.
Afterwards, I heard she thought I looked elegant in my high jumping. Probably a bit effete, slender as I was. She turned out to be the mother of my best friend, the only one I made there.
Robin de Rouen was almost a year younger than me. He swears the first thing I ever said to him was 'You look an intelligent chap'. I tell him it's not backed up by the evidence, though I've heard it so often I almost believe it. He repeated the line in his best-man speech at my wedding.
Back in the early 70s, we were pals at school mainly because our backgrounds were similar - foreign parents, though his were better off than mine - and he was the only guy who could give me a game at tennis (we won the house cup presented by Robert Morley). Before long, I was visiting his parents at their flat in Kensington.
When his dad opened the door and announced himself as Reed, I thought I'd miss-heard. Reed could be a christian name? America was a weird place.
Reed de Rouen was an all-round star. A sprinter at college, he played american football for Green Bay, no less. His calves were bigger than Robin's thighs.
When he came over to join the RAF during the war, he became a genuine war hero. I've seen his Purple Heart and DFC and letter from Reagan when he died
As an actor, screenwriter, and novelist, Reed was very active in the '50s and '60s - so his wife Claire didn't need to work. The money was good and he was forever in demand at Cinecittà and places. They'd met when she was twenty and he was 36 and divorced with kids.
As far as I can remember, Claire Alphandéry was born in Egypt to parents with a jewish italian background. Right to the end, she was the most striking woman, high cheekbones and a black bob down to her eyebrows, always in haute couture clobber. She stood out at my wedding, when she was over 75 and finally stopped lying about her age! For the last thirty years of her life, she had a boyfriend no older than her son.
When she was still with Reed, and his work began to dry up, Claire flipped a switch in her head.
Suddenly this dolce vita dilettante becomes the most disciplined person I ever knew. Never missed her daily workout routine and cleaned her kitchen floor every day. She also got a job, which had been a four-letter word till then. She became really very good at running places.
In the 1980s, she was at the Photographer's Gallery near Leicester Square tube. Then she made a big success of Zwemmer's art bookshop on the Charing Cross Road. By 2005 she had her own place, on the same street, a small space over a porn shop. Claire de Rouen Books became 'maybe the best photography bookshop in the world.' David Bailey said that.
Back in late '76, she worked at the ICA on the Mall, the Institute of Contemporary Arts. I visited her there a couple of times. Some of the exhibitions were way too radical for me at the time - but the place did have some quite big rooms...
I presume the scenario was the same as Borocourt. Someone mentioned a party coming up, and I wondered if they might fancy a free rock band. But maybe I just went right up to Claire and asked her. We were looking for anywhere to play, and the ICA, well...
*
Let's make it clear. Our third gig, on Saturday 18 December 1976 was a members' party, not a show for the public. We weren't that avante garde.
Can't remember how many people were there, or anything else about it really.
I kept every set list, and this one says we started with Carol, yet another Chuck Berry song. It rocks, but not as much as some of his others, he didn't make an effort with the intro, and the first word you sing, the name of the song, has to be in tune. I could never disguise that properly, so it wasn't a favourite. But it came good at our biggest gig.
We'd premiered Carol at the hospital, along with Jumpin' Jack Flash, which is my all-time favourite track. To listen to, not sing.
Mind you, it wasn't when it came out. It knocked Young Girl off the top of the charts, the Union Gap song which had been there for a month. As a thirteen-year-old boy, the video of a blonde girl in a white dresss moving through countryside...
This was suddenly replaced by the Stones on a big dipper at a fairground, the clashing guitar intro replacing Gary Puckett's crystal vocals on Young Girl. Shatter a teenage boy's daydream, why dontcha. I hoped it would climb back to number one so I could see the video again.
But Jack Flash grew on me (Young Girl's still there too). Decades later, a woman bumped into Mick Jagger at a party. Told him her husband (me) wanted Jumpin' Jack Flash played at his funeral. Oh, says Mick. I'm sorry he's dead! I sang it at my wedding first.
But the Les Milkins Band should never have covered it really. Too much of a classic, when we already had Honky Tonk Women and Sympathy for the Devil. And we did drop it after a while. But years later, by which time it didn't matter, we added Brown Sugar, which was getting really silly.
All in all, we played too many Stones tracks, but we never felt like a tribute band. It happened to be the only music we all liked.
At the ICA party, I don't think anyone applauded much or danced at all. It didn't help that we ended with that weak instrumental, Without Moses, followed by an encore no-one asked for! But it's interesting that we weren't disappointed by the crowd reaction, even though it was downbeat for a change. A gig's a gig, especially when it's only your third.
Again, I didn't dream of charging Claire a fee. But we had the idea of passing a hat around, like a bunch of buskers. It was a bit of fun at the time, but we got tried of it very quickly and the notes call it 'the bloody hat'.
Still, it brought in eleven quid, which paid for the petrol again. A working band was ticking over.
I had a lot of good times in the de Rouens' flat in Phillimore Court, even when Robin was in Australia. He came back for his dad's funeral in 1996. I went to that but not to Claire's in 2012 - because Robin didn't invite me. I never understood why. Nor did he.