Mid-June sees the release of a new album by Marianne Faithfull and concerts by the Rolling Stones at Wembley. It brings back vivid memories of a sunny June afternoon 30 years ago, when I had tea with Mick and Marianne. It was the start of a slow and painful process culminating in my acknowledgement that I was never going to be cool enough for the sixties. Here is how it happened.
I was a pretty Hampstead boy, nearly 16 years old and in the middle of O-levels. I used to get stoned at weekends with my older friend Paul, from down the road, listening to Astral Weeks. Paul's father, Jimmy, an exotic char-acter, distributed Andy Warhol's "underground" movies. And living in Jimmy's house that summer was Kenneth Anger, an American underground movie director with a small cult following for a movie called Scorpio Rising, which was about a biker combing his hair and putting on his leathers, ready to go out on his bike. That summer Kenneth shared his bed with a working-class English boy from a northern steel town.
Kenneth was planning a new film called Lucifer Rising and invited me to be one of the angels. He told me that Mick Jagger was to star as Lucifer-the fallen angel. For my part as a pre-Raphaelite cherub in the film, he gave me an amazing turquoise velvet shirt "made out of a 100-year-old opera cloak." Incredible. And he gave me some money to buy some turquoise Levi's cords to match. I did.
On Saturday, 7th June 1969, the newly-formed band Blind Faith (with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream and Steve Winwood from Traffic) were giving a free concert in Hyde Park. Kenneth wanted to shoot some stills of me and, borrowing my Practika SLR, we set off for Hyde Park. I still have the pictures: long hair, rosy cheeks, brown-striped T-shirt under an old green cord shirt of my dad's, hippy beads, maroon cord trousers, canary-yellow and royal-blue striped school rugby socks, and "fell boots." Kenneth's purple velvet jacket hangs to my left on a railing spike.
After the concert, Kenneth invited me to join him for tea with "some friends" of his. We walked over to Park Lane looking for a taxi. On the way, we talked about God. I told Kenneth I was an atheist; he told me about his religious experiences on acid in Paris, where he had burned a patch out of his retina looking at the sun. In the taxi, we talked about astrology and black magic, which Kenneth was into-at Jimmy's house he would cast spells and burn sandalwood incense and black candles in his room.
We pulled up outside a terraced house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and he rang the door bell. A lanky young hippy with thick lips answered. I looked up at him and asked incredulously: "Are you Mick Jagger?" Mick nodded non-committally and led us in. Inside was a delicious young hippy chick. Mick's chick. Marianne Faithfull.
After a while Marianne put the kettle on. Mick had a small upright organ. I pumped the bellows with my feet and played with one finger the only thing I knew: God save the Queen. Kenneth threw me a look and I stopped. Marianne said to me: "Hey, could you slice the bread for the toast because I can't get it together to slice bread." Eager to please this goddess, I did. It was good, wholemeal brown bread. And I made the toast, which we had with honey. Fancy honey with real honeycombs. I had never seen that before and chewed the beeswax gingerly.
Over tea they talked about the Blind Faith concert and I remember Mick saying: "The Stones should do a free concert in Hyde Park, too." They talked about audience participation at concerts. Mick remarked that in the US, audiences were much more responsive than over here. Marianne was worried about Keith Richards driving too fast and taking too many drugs. She thought he would kill himself. Meanwhile, on the floor, a small, portable, mono, automatic-loading record player was playing Fleetwood Mac. Donovan was expected for tea, but Kenneth and I had to split before he showed up.
Four weeks later, O-levels now over, I went with school-friends to the Stones' free concert in Hyde Park. Mick Taylor, ex-John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, was playing in place of Brian Jones, who had been found dead at the bottom of a swimming pool two days earlier. At the start of the concert, Mick Jagger read a poem by Shelley in memory of Brian.
Later that summer, just after two straights landed on the moon, Kenneth invited me to a party in Soho, together with my friend Paul. It was a party in honour of William Burroughs, writer of Naked Lunch, who was in London that week. I guess Paul and I were just there for decoration. No one paid much attention to us as we stood in a corner drinking Coca-Cola laced with whisky, receiving occasional visits from Kenneth, who was otherwise schmoozing with the grown-ups.
Some months later, after a family holiday in Italy, I was a sixth former with a new girlfriend. I recall an evening in late autumn, a party on a rooftop patio in Carnaby Street-I think it was Jimmy's new office-where I met Kenneth again. I guess he had also been away for the summer. When he saw me he said: "Oh my Gaad, you look so much older." So that was it. My ephemeral beauty had been made gaunt by the arrival of full-blown adolescence. My career as an actor in the alternative movie industry had miscarried. I was still reeling from this realisation, when Kenneth added: "You know, you really should not have asked Mick if he was Mick Jagger, Mick was really freaked when you said that."
How could I have been so uncool!
