Sometimes a tiny little moment, a gesture, will catch me unawares and transport me back to the sixties. One day I was waiting for a taxi after the Versace show, and suddenly there was Stella McCartney knocking on the window. As I turned and peered out, Stella gave me a wink and a thumbs up. And I had this sudden flashback to her dad, Paul, because that gesture and the wink is just what he used to do in those days. Kind of a corny music hall cheeky-chappie thing. So there was dear Stella by Starlight, who looks quite like the old man anyway, giving me Macca’s sign! The sixties was a great motley cast of characters in an ongoing operetta with multi-hued costumes to match. What I remember most is how beautiful everybody was, and, of course, the beautiful clothes: we dressed up like medieval damsels and princes, pirates, pre-Raphaelite Madonnas, popes, hussars, mad hatters and creatures visiting from other planets.
And then there were the courtiers and spear-carriers – all those strange characters around the Beatles and the Stones: the roadies, the hustlers, and instigators. George’s personal assistant Terry Doran, the ‘man in the motor trade’, somehow getting hold of Lennon’s psychedelic Rolls-Royce and ending up with a top job at Apple Corps. There was the sublime Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ publicist and agent provocateur; the sinister Tom Keylock, Andrew Oldham’s homicidal chauffeur; Brian’s thuggish builder, Frank Thorogood, and his deathbed confession of how he murdered Brian Jones.
Then there were the Beatles’ old roadies Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans. Big, benign, boyish Mal shot by the LA police during a misunderstanding. And Stu, Ian Stewart, the Stones’ original piano player. I loved Stu! I remember for my twenty-first birthday Mick wanted to buy me a car and Stu was given the mission to find it. He turned up with the most beautiful car imaginable, a 1927 Cadillac, a Bonnie and Clyde car in an incredible beige colour with a red stripe across it where the doors opened. How cool was that? But despite Mick’s efforts I never learned to drive. It was like driving a tank in the First World War, it had a gear stick and all that stuff, I could hardly see, my nose only just reached the windscreen.
Stu did me another great favour. Mick hated the Stones’ performance in The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus. He just wanted the whole thing to go away. It was like the scene from Snow White where the Wicked Queen says to the huntsman: ‘Go! Take her into the forest and destroy her!’ with Mick as the Wicked Queen and Stu as the huntsman. Except that it wasn’t me he was talking about, it was the cans of film of my part in Rock and Roll Circus. He wanted those tapes destroyed. Burned. Thrown into the Thames. For ever eliminated. And Stu said, ‘Yeah, okay, Mick, will do.’ But he couldn’t do it! ‘Where can I put these cans of film,’ Stu thought to himself, ‘where Mick will never think to ever look?’ And so he took them to Eel Pie Island and said, ‘I say, Pete [Townshend, this was], I’ve got these old cans of film. Do you mind if I leave them in your garage?’ And Pete said, ‘No, Stu, go on. That’s fine, you know, I don’t mind, don’t use it, there’s nothing really in there.’ And there they lay, mouldering away, for twenty-five years, until one day, God knows, Pete, clearing out the garage, found the film and it said Rock and Roll Circus on it! And he goes, ‘Oh, hey, what’s this?’ And being incredibly smart, he put it on his home projection and watched it, and every single shot was of me for the Rock and Roll Circus. He called Allen Klein and said, ‘I’ve got something you’ll be very interested in. I’ve found the lost Marianne film from the Circus. What do you want me to do with it, Allen?’ And Allen said, ‘Hallelujah! I’ll send a courier.’ And he did. He sent his daughter, Robin Klein, to pick it up. Townshend knew about this problem because of course The Who were very much involved with the Rock and Roll Circus – and he also knew that one of the reasons the show hadn’t come out was because they appeared to have upstaged the Stones. They really didn’t, but, anyway …
And there it all was, except for one really beautiful crane shot. I don’t know what happened to that. Maybe Mick was so angry that he just had one roll of film out of a can, tore it into a million pieces and burned it in the back garden as he and Bianca danced around it hooting like owls!
I loved Mick, I really did, you know – but if I had stayed in that situation with Mick, all that money, going to the South of France, Keith and Anita Pallenberg, blah-di-blah, Goat’s Head Soup, I’d be dead, and I knew that. And if I was going to go down, I wanted to go down my own way! Not with some adjunct decadent ringleader and his scurvy crew!
When I split with Mick and left with Nicholas, I took a beautiful Persian carpet and some Ossie Clark dresses and all my Deliss silk clothes. So these were the clothes I was wearing when I was living on the street, a wraith-like vision, an anorexic waif, feeling no pain, and not feeling any cold either, of course, you see, because of the smack.
At this point, I’m sort of an honorary Rolling Stone, a situation I’m a little ambivalent about. I love them and we had such great times, but it was a really hard scene to be in. I was never going to be good at functioning in that bitchy world, with all those betrayals. Now, when I go to see them backstage or at the George V Hotel, it’s lovely to see Keith and Ronnie and Mick and Charlie. Charlie’s always been a delight. I love to go and hear him outside of the Stones environment when he plays his jazz shows in London.
I’m still scared of the Stones because I always have this feeling – and it’s not just an illusion – of being sucked in again. Unlike Anita, I don’t have any immediate connection with them. I’m a free agent, and yet, when I see them, I suddenly feel drawn in. I go back to their very beginnings. I am part of them. I know that. And that’s okay.
One of the favourite places Mick and I liked to hang out was George and Pattie Boyd’s house in Weybridge. Mick loved George and I thought Pattie one of the most beautiful people ever. I loved the way she dressed, her fantastic sense of style. Psychedelic dresses in beautiful colours or little skirts that showed off her wonderful legs.
During those magical afternoons George would be the perfect host, serving up exotic teas, fat joints, and his new songs like exquisite delicacies offered for our consumption. A little bungalow (by rock star standards) brightly painted in sparkly psychedelic ice-cream colours, very warm and cosy and friendly, like the people who lived there, with a garden full of sunflowers and cushions outside. Just a very soft, gentle vibe, as if this fairy-tale cottage were conjured out of his sweet melancholy songs.
It was always far easier to go and visit people from other bands. You didn’t have all the stresses and strains you do with your own group. At Redlands, Keith’s house in West Sussex, there was always some tension – undercurrents that I couldn’t even put into words. Subterranean stuff, which I think is always lurking about in any band. What makes an interesting band is that incongruous combination of people at odds. The tension makes for great music, but it doesn’t always make for the easiest social situations.
Clearly there were similar issues with the Beatles, but any raging insecurities or problems within the group were never apparent at Weybridge on a sunny afternoon, with George sitting cross-legged on a kilim playing us his songs.
So being with George and Pattie was very relaxing. Mick and I were able to lie back on Moroccan cushions, get high and float away listening to George’s new songs. When he wasn’t playing his own stuff, he would be playing Ravi Shankar on those beautiful green discs we all used to have. I do think he very much brought all that into our world.
Mick loved George’s songs – those wonderful songs on Revolver – but George never felt that anybody appreciated his songs, really, or thought they were as good as John and Paul’s. George was racked with doubt about his work, but it’s now obvious what a great songwriter he was. ‘Beware of Darkness’ is as good as anything anybody ever wrote.
In a way, Brian Jones was George’s counterpart in the Stones. But there was a big difference in their personalities. The thing about George – and we all feel it strongly now that he’s gone off and left us – is that he plunged into things. Whatever he got into, whether it was the sitar and Ravi Shankar or the Maharishi, he walked right in and never