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1966

Colville Community History Project issue 16 July 2016 It’s Your Colville www.colvillecom.com contact tomvague@gmail.com Getting it straight in Notting Hill Gate

1966 The year the decade exploded in Notting Hill History talk and slideshow by Tom Vague Tuesday July 26 2016 6-9 pm Featuring Blow Up, Cat Stevens, I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet, Twiggy, the London Free School, Muhammad Ali, Destruction In Art Symposium, the first Carnival and Pink Floyd, Brian Nevill reading from ‘Boom Baby’, a musical interlude with Rosamund Portobellogirl and sounds of 66.

In 1966, the year the decade exploded in Notting Hill, there were local film scenes in ‘Blow Up’, ’Alfie’, ‘Georgy Girl’, ’Jemima and Johnny’ and ‘Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment’, I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet boutique at 293 Portobello Road was visited by Rolling Stones, Beatles and Beachboys, Cat Stevens’ ‘Portobello Road’ song was released, Cream formed in the area, the London Free School featured the first Carnival procession, Pink Floyd in All Saints Church Hall and auto-destructive art on the Westway site, IT and Oz were founded, Nancy Sinatra was photographed in Powis Square, Twiggy on Kensington Park Road and Jane Asher in Portobello market, Muhammad Ali visited Tavistock Crescent and the England team went along Ladbroke Grove with the World Cup. In ‘Blow Up’ David Hemmings photographs Vanessa Redgrave in Johnny Cowan’s studio on Prince’s Place off Princedale Road. 77 Pottery Lane acts as the studio’s exterior, the production office was on Princedale Road and the premiere was held at the Coronet (then the Gaumont) at Notting Hill Gate. In ‘Alfie’ Michael Caine speaks to the camera outside Shelley Winters’ flat in Campden Hill Towers, and his bed-sit is on the corner of St Stephen’s Gardens and Chepstow Road. In ‘Georgy Girl’ Charlotte Rampling gives birth at St Charles Hospital. In ‘Jemima and Johnny’ the adventures of a young black girl and white boy conclude with their rescue from a derelict house by Johnny’s formerly racist father. In ‘Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment’ David Warner stars as an artist prone to wearing a gorilla costume, in a marital farce with Vanessa Redgrave filmed in and around Campden Hill Square. The Portobello pop market opened for business in 1966 with Cat Stevens’ ‘Portobello Road’ song, the b-side of his debut single ‘I Love My Dog’, the first release on Decca’s Deram label: ‘Getting hung up all day on smiles, walking down Portobello Road for miles, greeting strangers in Indian boots, yellow ties and old brown suits, growing old’s my only danger, cuckoo clocks and plastic socks, lampshades of old antique leather, nothing looks weird, not even a beard, or the boots made out of feathers, I’ll keep walking miles till I feel a broom beneath my feet, or the hawking eyes of an old stuffed bull across the street, nothing’s the same, if you see it again it’ll be broken down to litter, oh and the clothes, everyone knows that dress will never fit her.’ Rob Finnis has cited ‘Portobello Road’ as ‘one of the few songs to capture, unaffectedly, the essence of London in the so called swinging 60s.’ Ironically the lyrics are by the American producer Kim Fowley, who went on to manage the Runaways punk group. Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) was later photographed on Basing Street by the ‘Tigers of Wrath’ graffiti near the Island recording studios. In 1967 the track was covered by the American singer Ellie Janov and there was another ‘Portobello Road’ song by Spectrum. In ‘Sunny South Kensington’ Donovan came north to Portobello and ‘met a fellow with a cane umbrella he must have used as a sieve.’

In the 60s Portobello Road’s most famous number was 293, which hosted I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet, ‘London’s first secondhand boutique’, specialising in ‘kinky, period and military gear.’ The sign featured a drawing of Lord Kitchener from his iconic World War 1 recruiting poster. The venture was founded by John Paul and Ian Fisk as an antiques market stall. The shop opened, north of the railway line and the site of the Westway, in February 1966. In Richard Lester’s ‘Boutique London’, it’s described as ‘a dark and dense space combining 19th century military jackets, fur coats and Victorian junk into one huge nostalgic mix.’ Lord Kitchener’s Valet became renowned shortly after the shop opened, following a visit by Mick Jagger and John Lennon. On May 21 Jagger and Lennon were photographed walking down Portobello Road with Chrissie Shrimpton and Cynthia Lennon after a party. The shop assistant Robert Orbach recalls them appear-ing at 293: “I’m sitting there one morning and in walked John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Cynthia Lennon. I didn’t know whether I was hallucinating but it was real.” Jagger duly bought a red Grenadier Guards drummer’s jacket, and wore it on May 27 when the Rolling Stones performed their number 1 hit ‘Paint It Black’ on ‘Ready Steady Go’. Orbach says: “The next morning there was a line of about 100 people wanting to buy this tunic, and we sold everything in the shop by lunchtime.” The shop was introduced in a 1966 Sunday magazine photo spread report as ‘the boutique of kinky clothes’: ‘Lord Kitchener of Khartoum would undoubtedly turn in his grave if he knew that he was giving his name to a ‘with-it’ boutique in London’s Portobello Road, and he would probably be even more horrified if he knew the boutique was selling the uniform of the British Army as the latest ‘mod’ gear. Nevertheless, that’s what’s happening, and a thriving business it is, too. Two years ago, two young men—John Paul and Ian Fisk—came up with the idea of selling second-hand clothes to the ‘In-Crowd’. It was obviously no good selling last year’s fashions to mods but there might be a potential market for really old clothes—the sort that could well be coming back into fashion. ‘They began selling old fur coats which went like hot cakes to both boys and girls, and also had a good line in ancient paraffin heaters. Then they bought up a large stock of red military jackets which were snapped up by clamouring teenagers at 30/- a time. Soon it was old combat jackets, policemen’s capes, sailors’ trousers, caps, boots, buttons, any old clothes that they could lay their hands on. “We sell over a hundred military jackets a week”, says Alan Fitch, the boutique manager. The Portobello Road has become a hunting ground for mods and pop stars alike. John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Manfred Mann and others have all been through the military jacket stage. Manfred Mann offered Ian Fisk £20 for the best jacket in the shop, fur, gold braid, the lot, but it is their finest possession and not for sale.’

‘The latest from Lord Kitchener’s Valet—Tunics—Drill in green, red, mustard and khaki, sizes 37-40 52/6 Naval bell-bottoms, sizes 28-32, yellow, white, pink 45/- Capes—Police capes in heavy black serge 66/- Continental police capes, extra long, with red piping on collar 50/- As above, shorter and with coloured collar 70/- Best quality capes, with silk lining and coloured velvet collar 92/6 T-shirts—Union Jack, Lord Kitchener and a variety of others available—small—medium—large 15/- Many other lines—please send SAE for list. Lord Kitchener’s Valet, 293 Portobello Road W10. Lad 3826.’ As the trend caught on, the Beachboys, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix were also fitted out with Guards jackets at Lord Kitchener’s Valet. In ‘The Beachboys in London’ film by Peter Whitehead, Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine visit the shop. Jardine tries on a Guards jacket and admiral’s hat while Dennis Wilson dons a fireman’s helmet. Jon Savage, the author of ‘1966: The year the decade exploded’ recalls: ‘Victoriana, iron crosses and military jackets galore’, when he first visited Portobello that year. The Oz editor Richard Neville’s first impression of the area in 66 was “all these kids dressed up in generals’ uniforms and Napoleonic hats.’ Ed Vulliamy reminisced about ‘all those Sergeant Pepper jackets outside Finch’s’ pub at 179 Portobello Road. Brian Nevill recounts a trip to Lord Kitchener’s Valet in his book ‘Boom Baby’: ‘Chris introduced me to Portobello Road in 1966. His purpose was to buy a guards’ parade jacket, which were just gaining ground at this time; this was his consolation choice after an Afghan coat, which was too expensive. The establishment we were heading for sat at the rat’s ass end of Portobello, just past where the early excavations for the Westway had ravaged and scarred this part of ‘The Lane’. This wasteland was nicknamed ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ by Emily Young of ‘See Emily Play’ fame—Pink Floyd would make her and her title famous one day. ‘People set up stalls here selling tat in a less organised way than at the antiques end. I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet was the name of a boutique that had opened that year specializing in antique military clothing like admirals’ coats and guards’ jackets. It proved to be popular with rock musicians and the set that dwelled in the grey area between beats and mods. It stood in the middle of a row of tumbledown terraced shops one block up from the overhead Metropolitan railway line that crossed over Portobello from east to west, and would one day soon be paralleled by the Westway. Chris bought a bright red number there, and he was as proud as Punch. On our way back along Portobello an old gentleman leaning on his front gate at one of those little cottages at the Notting Hill end of the road, where mostly old folks seemed to live (and which are now multi-million pound merchant banker dwellings), started yelling at Chris that he should-n’t be wearing that jacket. He had fought in the Boer war or some other war, and was well cheesed off seeing his colours flaunted by a long-haired beatnik like Chris.’

In the wake of Lord Kitchener’s Valet’s success on Portobello Road, the shop moved to Foubert’s Place off Carnaby Street and then Piccadilly Circus. Jimi Hendrix’s famous braided Hussars’ jacket probably came from the Foubert’s Place shop. John Paul later had a shop on King’s Road called I Was Lord Kitchener’s Thing. 293 Portobello Road went on to be the hippy head shops, Injun Dog and Forbidden Fruit. In recent years 293 has been Johnson’s and Hideout clothes shops. The military uniform tradition is maintained today just along from 293 by the stall at the entrance to the Portobello Green Arcade under the Westway. The mod red and white striped T-shirt as worn by Brian Jones has been named ‘293 Portobello Road’ after Lord Kitchener’s Valet. In 1967 the shop inspired the song ‘I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet’ by the New Vaudeville Band, featuring the lines: ‘Oh, Lord Kitchener, what a to do? Everyone is wearing clothes that once belonged to you, if you were alive today I’m sure you would explode if you took a stroll down the Portobello Road.’ There was also ‘I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman’ by Whistling Jack Smith. Otis Redding is recalled in Notting Hill in 66 visiting a club called the Brigadier, with his band, the Barkeys, after appearing at the Tiles club in Oxford Street. The local mod group, the Area, who included the future Home Secretary Alan Johnson, practised in the crypt of the Methodist church on Lancaster Road. Nancy Sinatra was photographed in Powis Square, at the time of ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, next to a street sign with some local kids for the cover of her 1966 album ‘Nancy in London’. Eric Clapton formed Cream at Ginger Baker’s ‘basement flat in Ladbroke Grove’, with Ginger and Jack Bruce from the local Graham Bond Organisation. The Van Morrison song ‘He Ain’t Give You None’ on his 1967 album ‘Blowin’ Your Mind’ features the warning: ‘I got messed up round some-where called Notting Hill Gate, I lived there for a while but I moved out, and when I moved out I was in such a state, I’m never going back there... keep away from Notting Hill Gate, keep away from the Gate…’ Twiggy was photographed, wearing a floral mini-dress, holding a balloon, at the junction of Westbourne Grove and Kensington Park Road when she lived on Ladbroke Gardens with Justin de Villeneuve, a former Rachman protégé. Lesley Hornby came from Neasden and worked in a Bayswater hairdressing salon, before de Villeneuve named her Twiggy and launched her model-ing career. ‘This is the face of 66’, proclaimed the Daily Express, ‘the Cockney kid with the face to launch a thousand shapes… This is the name, Twiggy, because she is branch slim, bends to every shape in fashion, and has her hair cut like a cap made of leaves. This is the look that from this moment will launch thousands of clothes.’ Jane Asher was photographed on Portobello at a joke spider toy stall. On July 30 the England team went along Ladbroke Grove on their way back from Wembley after winning the World Cup.

Acklam before the flyover

Following the beat poetry Olympics at the Albert Hall in 1965, British hippy counter-culture in the UK was launched with the London Free School adult education community action project in Notting Hill. Influenced by American Free or Anti-Universities, the group offered ‘free education through lectures and discussion groups in housing, families and mental health, labour relations and unions, maths and statistics, comparative religion, photography, science, economics, law, English, immigration, current affairs, music and painting—The London Free School is not political, not racial, not intellectual, not religion, not a club. It is open to all.’ The Free School group was described as an ‘anarchic temporary coalition’ of local community activists from the Rachman days and the new beatnik/hippy generation. The loose association, brought together by the secretary John ’Hoppy’ Hopkins and Pete Jenner, who went on to manage Pink Floyd, featured George Clark of the Notting Hill Community Workshop, the Carnival founder Rhaune Laslett, the local black power leader Michael de Freitas aka Michael X, Joe Boyd of Elektra Records, the photo-grapher Graham Keen, Dave Tomlin, Andrew King, Adam Ritchie, Andre and Barbara Shervington, Lloyd Hunte, Michael Horovitz, John Michell, Jeff Nuttall, Mike McInnerney, Neil Oram, Felix de Mendelsohn, Nigel Waymouth, Ron Atkins, Kate Heliczer, Harvey Matusow, Emily Young and Anjelica Huston. The London Free School building was 26 Powis Terrace —formerly a jazz record shop and a brothel, recalled by Hoppy as jointly owned by John Michell and Michael X—across the road from David Hockney’s studio. But, by all accounts, not much happened there apart from band practices in Dave Tomlin (of the Giant Sun Trolley and Third Ear Band)’s psychedelic basement. Inspired by the Spontaneous Underground happenings at the Marquee, the Free School music group set up the DNA label to release an album through Elektra Records by the free improvisation avant-garde jazz group AMM, entitled

‘Extracts from a Continuous Performance’. The Free School’s best publicity came on May 15 when Rhaune Laslett’s children’s group at 34 Tavistock Crescent was visited by the world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (featured in the last news-letter issue 15). Michael X recalled that Ali’s visit ‘helped to focus interest on the school’s activities and enabled us to raise money for other amenities like the provision of an adventure playground for children of the area—the only playground they have—on a piece of ground that’s due to have a flyover built on it some time in the future. It was with this that we got the first inkling of official hostility. The local council, who had agreed to our request that the ground be used for the benefit of the children, said they would clear it of dangerous debris like the rusty old car bodies and lumps of jagged scrap iron with which it was littered. Suddenly, however, they seemed to show no further interest in the scheme and we got on with the job of clearing the site ourselves.’

In Jonathon Green’s ‘Days in the Life’ hippy oral history book the Westway site playground was called ‘the dark side of the moon’ by Emily Young (of Pink Floyd’s ‘See Emily Play’ fame): “They were starting to build the motor-way and they’d knocked down this run of houses. It was the dark side of the moon, the other side of wonderful Britain. It was the Martian wasteland. There were dead donkeys lying around, and dead people, a dead baby one time, a very weird place, desolation. And we’d have happenings; huge bonfires and musicians would come and Dave Tomlin played the saxophone and wrote poems and we’d take a lot of acid.” At the last London Free School meeting, as Westway construction work began in September 1966, Adam Ritchie proposed continuing the adventure playground part of the project under the flyover. The North Kensington Playspace Group was subsequently formed by him and John O’Malley of the Notting Hill Community Workshop, to establish a permanent adventure play-ground on Acklam Road. In 1968 the Playspace Group was renamed the Motorway Development Trust, which in due course became the North Kensington Amenity Trust/Westway Trust. On the southern side of the Westway site, the Free School playground was succeeded by Rhaune Laslett’s ‘shanty town’ adventure playground in the back gardens between Tavistock Crescent and Tavistock Road, east of St Luke’s Road on or about the site of the current playground.

Acklam Hall—Subterania In the summer the London Free School adventure playground was founded on the site of the Westway, formerly the south side of Acklam Road, across the railway footbridge from Tavistock Crescent. In ‘The Politics of Community Action’ description by Jan O’Malley: ‘Steps were built down from the road to give children access and rough structures and swings were knocked together.’ The playground founder Adam Ritchie, a local photographer, was inspired by community action he’d seen in New York’s Tompkins Square that saved a play area from redevelopment. After he left out a hammer, saw and nails on the Westway site, he recalled the children creating ‘complex, wonderful structures’ by themselves. In September the Free School playground was the venue of a series of auto-destructive art performances as part of DIAS, Gustav Metzger’s Destruction In Art Symposium. These happenings included the Brazilian Pro-Diaz’s self-explanatory ‘Painting with Explosion’, Werner Schreib’s ‘Death of Lucullus’, which consisted of a picture of the West German chancellor Ludwig Erhard being set alight, and Ivor Davies’ ‘Robert Mitchum Destruction Explosion Event’ in a derelict house on the other side of Acklam Road, in which a shop dummy and picture of Robert Mitchum were blown up. DIAS also included Raphael Montanez Ortiz, John Latham, Mark Boyle and Yoko Ono. Their auto-destructive art influenced the stage acts of the Who and Hendrix.

Muhammad Ali has his hands wrapped by Angelo Dundee at the Territorial Army gym at White City in 1966. On the left is Jack Achilles, head chef of Isow’s, where Ali would eat in the run-up to his fights. Photo-graph R McPhedran/Getty Images. A photographic reminder of Muhammad Ali’s kindness to my father letter to the Guardian by Rosanna Achilleos-Sarli 12/6/2016: My father, Jack Achilles, was the head chef at Isow’s restaurant in Brewer Street, Soho, when Jack Solomons, a regular customer, promoted the fight in 1963 between Henry Cooper and Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay. Ali stayed in Piccadilly and frequently went to eat at Isow’s. Knowing as much about food as Ali knew about boxing, my father got on well with his most appreciative diner. Ali trusted that he would feed him

whenever he was in London, and especially before his fights. From then on a telegram from Ali would arrive to let my father know when to get the Aberdeen Angus steaks ready. He would go to choose the meat and supervise the butchering, to make sure it was fit for a king. In turn, he was singled out by Ali in the press conferences and generously included in many of the photo calls that were routinely held at Isow’s. One afternoon, in 1963, our entire family went, at Ali’s invitation, to the East End to watch him sparring before the fight with Cooper. My father was also given tickets to the fights. In simply acknowledging the important part my father played in feeding him so well, Ali was a giant among men. Earlier this year I attended a lecture in North Kensington library, west London, given by the local historian Tom Vague. The subject was a visit by Ali to the London Free school playgroup in Tavistock Crescent in 1966. In the middle of the lecture, a slide came up of Ali training at the Territorial Army gym at White City and standing next to him was my father. I had never seen the photograph and it caused quite a stir when I called out: “That’s my dad.” It is a tremendous photograph. Both men are laughing while Angelo Dundee wraps Ali’s hands. To my eye, my father and Ali look equally matched in the image, and that was Ali’s greatest gift—to relate to everyone, to look down on no one, to be generous to all, to enjoy the moment.

The next number, ‘I Don’t Want to Go Home Just Yet’, which was having its first public airing, could be the soundtrack of an after-hours bar film scene. She calls it her ‘jazz standard, or as close as I’ve got to one so far’, and imagined it ‘coming out of a jukebox, in a bar like the old Portobello Star back in the day, kind of dusky light and two people dancing.’ Joe Strummer once bought her a pint of Guinness there. That’s followed by ‘Getaway’, which she doesn’t recall writing, only the mood she wanted to convey, like an abstract painting; ‘Spanish Hotel’, ‘a love song written late one evening and completed early the next day on guitar’; and ‘Half Without Him’, an old number that she still plays and describes as ‘one of those magic tunes that simply writes itself.’ Her encore, ‘Casino Blue’, for which she’s called back to the stage, has a haunting quirkiness reminiscent of John Cale, with the same sort of Celtic qualities. She describes it as ‘scrambled together from scribbled notes’, but it works and is much appreciated by the Elgin crowd. Rosamund represents the almost lost Bohemian atmosphere of old Notting Hill in ‘Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd at All Saints church hall, ‘Performance’ and Van Morrison’s ‘Slim Slow Slider’. Adding to her local street credibility, she has been photographed on stage by Eddie O’Connell, the star of the ‘Absolute Beginners’ film. She hails from Hastings, where she spent her formative years going to punk gigs at the Pier Pavilion before coming to Notting Hill in the 80s. As Rosamund puts it in her new song ‘Pencil It In’: ‘It remains to be seen what remains of the scene.’ No one here gets out of Portobello Live. Elgin breakdown by Tom Vague . Colville 1966 part 3 slideshow-talk-event-happening at Book & Kitchen in September will feature the London Free School Fayre, Pink Floyd at All Saints hall, John Hopkins and International Times.

Rosamund Portobellogirl at the Notting Hill Arts Club launch party for Malcolm Boyle’s film tribute to the London Free School and International Times founder, photographer and promoter John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins 22/3/2016 photograph Marta Boros No one here gets out of Portobello Live 1976/2016: Rosamund Portobellogirl live at the Elgin on Ladbroke Grove is a cool English Nicoesque experience, creating a suitably Bohemian atmosphere at the Portobello Live May festival, on the most local bill presented by James Simmins, also featuring the Delphi and Steve Dior bands. Rosamund, dressed in a vintage/second-hand black Jaeger dress from an Elgin Crescent charity shop, channels the vibe and spirit of Nico playing at the old Britannia pub on nearby Clarendon Road—though the piano at the Elgin was a bit better than the battered, out-of-tune one the Velvet Underground singer used when she was in the area in the late 70s. As the backroom of the pub, cleared of its 21st century gastro facilities, fills with Portobello Live punters, (for me at any rate) this was to be a local pop history trip back in time to 1976, on the 40th anniversary of punk rock’s absolute beginning in W11. It was here at the Elgin that Joe Strummer’s 101’ers’ pub rock gigs were checked out by the other future Clash members Mick Jones and Paul Simonon and the local Sex Pistols. It happened here, and still does occasionally. Tonight’s proceedings concluded in authentic punk rock chaos with Steve Dior (who is in the Clash rock family tree and played with Sid Vicious in New York). Rosamund begins her set with ‘Song of Spring’, a cool Velvety number conceived at the Spanish bar/cafes on the Portobello/Tavistock Road square by the Westway.