LETTER FROM LOTUSLAND

June 2010

This is Wednesday, a few hours before my radio show at

Luxuriamusic (Internet radio) on the second floor of the funky
1914 house near the concreted banks of the LA River, in the
Twinkies/Wonder Bread neighborhood of few neighbors where the
autos speed by making an unholy racket of rap and/or bullets
while I’m on the air with mikes conking out and falling down and
CD players giving up the ghost.
Then why do I bother with the show? Because it’s a chance
to focus on a music theme which makes me seek out tracks from
the collection; because I can meet my friends beforehand at the
Astro Family Restaurant near the station and drink red wine and
eat a gyro and talk. Talk is the meat and drink of my life. Any life
worth living. That and observation—but I never do much of that.
Should try. Regina told me to describe what she was wearing the
other night as we drove to a birthday party at the Magic Castle—
and I had to turn and look hard and try to absorb the pattern and
color of her dress. I could see she had a flower in her hair. She
said it’s important to remember what she was wearing in case we
split up and lost each other.
I haven’t put a radio show together yet today because I’m
trying to write this Letter for you all. I wish I knew who you all
were. I really should wait to write until after the weekend, when
we’ve returned from Las Vegas and I can file you a full report. I’ll
do that next week perhaps but then the Letter will be late…
As you can see I’m in a bit of a tizzy today. Can’t get any
job started. Can’t concentrate. Caused by: computer refusing to
take orders and talking back to us in machine-speak (“Error
Occurred”, Rollo continuously barking at squirrels who turn up
their noses at him from atop the tall maple tree.
Anyway…
On Friday morning, at crack of dawn, we’re off to that
hellhole, that excrescence in the desert, Las Vegas, because I’m
appearing in a show at a casino called The Funnery: “KLAP

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Summer Of Fun Kickoff” subtitled as a “Music, food, car show,
sun & fun festival”.
It started life as a tribute to Gordon Waller of Peter &
Gordon, the hot GB duo of the 1960s. Gordon died of a heart
attack last year. He wasn’t old enough but then he didn’t take
care of himself—drinking and smoking like hell, looking like
Methuselah, only older. The paramedics told him the first time
they responded that fatal day to please let them take him to a
hospital but he refused. So later, just around “Jeopardy” time, he
said he felt woozy, fell over on the way to the kitchen and never
regained consciousness.
Peter Asher will lead what’s billed as “The Peter Gordon
Band”; Gordon’s daughters and first wife are flying in from
Cornwall; the other acts are without their original groups: Denny
Laine, formerly of The Moody Blues and Wings, Terry Sylvester,
formerly of The Hollies, D.J. Fontana, former drummer for Elvis in
the early days. Of course, I’m without Bluesville, but then they
never followed me to America back in the days when I was for a
moment a star of the British Invasion. Only Chad & Jeremy are
intact as a self-contained group.
It’s a free event and the promoter says that there could be
thousands there. The starting time is odd—4pm. And, as I’m the
low man on the hit totem pole, I’ll be on first. Haven’t beaten out
the rock stuff in decades. I mean, with a live all-electric rock
band. We dish out a few 50s rockers at Cantalini’s for the Elvis
Lady but that’s in a corner nook and the instrumentation is
acoustic guitar, stand-up bass and ukulele.
I toured with Peter & Gordon in 1965 and with Chad &
Jeremy the following year. After a while they accepted me. We all
came from pretty snooty social backgrounds--private schools and
all that. Sir Tim Rice, another private school man, was scheduled
to sing “Summertime Blues” in the first show but he emailed to
say he’s feeling lousy and due to high blood pressure his doctor
says no.
Last night, Tuesday, I reported to a horrid inhuman
rehearsal in a studio in a shopping strip mall at the far end of the
Valley. A run-through with the Peter Gordon band. I was
impressed that the players had studied my recordings and got

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them down nicely. The bass player told the guitarist that in
“Nervous”, which I always thought was just a straight blues, the
bass line must be followed for its special progression. Impressive.
And when the keyboard-leader played the “You Turn Me On”
opening lick with added gospel changes I told him it wasn’t so
complicated. He laughed like hell.
The promoter took me aside to ask whether I’d sing
“Summertime Blues” in the set with D.J. Fontana. I said I didn’t
know that one but that I can sing “Shake Rattle And Roll” and we
always get great response at Cantalini’s. He shook his head. No, I
must stick to the song I already chose, “Are You Lonesome
Tonight?” But that’s a waltz and I want to rock with DJ. No…You
can’t do but one number with him. We’ve already relaxed the
rules by allowing “Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go?” which was
never a hit. Yes it was! No, it wasn’t—we’ve checked. But it
reached #101! There you are…
I’ve always been thrilled by the idea of D.J. Fontana---
starting with the magnificently American name. In photos he had
slicked-back greasy hair and a louche lower lip like he’d seen-
and-done it all. He played hard rim shots like a strip club
drummer. He created that exciting ratat-tat-tatta-tat-tat snare
drum bashing on “Hound Dog”—all the excitement of a machine
gun. Just like with JFK’s assassination I remember where I was
when I first heard the record: in Phillip’s Record Shop in Putney
High Street, London, near home, in the mid-1950s. I shivered. It
was almost sexual. My older sister and her friend stuck their
fingers in their ears. Now they’re Elton John fans.
I just looked up DJ Fontana on You Tube. In an interview
with George Klein he says that at shows with Elvis the screams
were so loud that he couldn’t hear the band. So he got his time
from watching Elvis’s bottom twitch and shake. He could have
said an ass was leading him but he didn’t. Nor would I say that
because I am a true Elvis fan.

Here are some notes on our Vegas rock trip, ripped from my
daily journal………….

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 THURSDAY, May 27: Lucky we’re leaving tomorrow for the
show because we’ll escape the aggressive threatening din from
next door. Our preacher neighbor Oliver, who drives a big black
car donated to him by a grateful congregation, has ordered the
start of house improvements. He kindly informed Regina that he’s
making extensions to his house—sprouting out from side and
back, right against our wall. Why on earth? He lives there alone
with his wife. His children are long gone. The construction is
necessary, he explained magisterially and with a firm authority,
because he needs more room for his children and their families at
Thanksgiving.
So the banging and bashing from earth movers and trucks
that started this morning and which will proceed into the Fall, is
all in honor of one blessed meal in November! Not even
Christmas! He also calmly announced the tearing down of the old
metal fence of 50 years or more, with its fine cloak of ivy and
brambles bearing blackberries. A cinder block wall will replace
this. Regina has protested that she’ll be looking out of the
bedroom window of a morning and feel like she’s in prison. Oh,
but it will be such a beautiful wall, a wall as impressive as the one
in Jericho, assures Oliver. I reckon he delivers a pretty impressive
sermon. Regina is worried that the preacher may be making
these improvements in preparation for the moving of his church
into his house and that we’ll be swamped with hosannas and
testimony in a thick sauce of melisma.
After a Vegas haircut from Tammy, our hairdresser at the
far end of the Valley, we had the sad task of taking Rollo to his
safe place for while we are away: the Pasadena Humane Society’s
boarding facility. Passed the rows of howling and beseeching
rescue dogs waiting for adoption—beautiful heartbreaking
creatures doing their best performance so that we might break
down and take them, unlike the indifferent cats---Rollo was led
until we came to a reserved cage in a long line of cages. Seeing
the accommodations—a concrete cell decorated with a lone metal
water bowl---he tried to make a jail break and foiled me. In the
end the Humane Society man took over and corralled him. We
couldn’t bear to look back as we left. What would he be thinking
of us? No doubt that he’d misbehaved in some way and that we

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were punishing him. He’d have to remain in this cell for three
nights, though he didn’t know that and might believe he’d never
see us again. We left him barking and could still hear his cries as
we drove off in search of a drink.

FRIDAY, May 28: a smooth drive up the #15, happy to see

the uniform clutter of civilization gradually disappear and the
stark, simple, spacey brown desert begin, backed by slate
mountains with a few snow-capped peaks adding a white beauty
far, far away.
Beckoning billboards informed us that “Peggy Sue’s 50s
Diner” was only minutes away--100s of minutes, to be sure, but
minutes nevertheless. More billboards told us we were getting
closer and closer to good, home-cooked food.
I liked the idea of a one-off restaurant, not a chain. So we
stopped. We were rewarded with tasty eggs and bacon and
pancakes served by older, experience-faced waitresses who called
us “honey” and “dearie”, in a low-ceilinged setting of Marilyn
Monroe stills and posters, supported by James Dean and Elvis.
We saw a table of grotesque fat people, who would put
circus freaks to shame, tucking into food they ought not eat-- our
first sighting of many we would see later.
In the next booth sat a biker man with long hair and beard
cuddling his parchment-skinned lady who would, no doubt, have
been a sexy piece a few decades ago. She was having trouble
reading out the questions in a pop quiz on a card provided by
Peggy Sue. As they were stuck in silence on the answer to “What
was the name of The Big Bopper’s hit?” I spoke up: “Chantilly
Lace”. The biker was grateful. Thus emboldened I also supplied
the answer to the next question: “Fabian”. Thank you, sir. How
do you know all this?
“Because I have worked with these stars”. I was hoping
that this would lead into my rock career and then to my
announcing that I was on my way to perform in Vegas with D.J.
Fontana, the Elvis drummer. But there was no follow-up. Only a
glare when I tried to answer the next quiz question. We moved
on with our journey….

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 Within four hours we were in Las Vegas, obviously. Gone
was the clean open desert. Present was modern life in all its
blaring awfulness. One poor snow-capped mountain tried
pathetically to compete with the razzle-dazzle of this city of sin
founded by a gangster. High-rise after high-rise. A great lump of
a building simply signed, “TRUMP”. Nearby a glittering gold
resort, like a tart, called “Mandalay Bay”. A bay in the desert?
Regina assured me she’d stayed here courtesy of her Goldman
Sachs brother when she was baby-sitting his family and that she
had enjoyed the racing water chutes that bent and whirled you to
a great ocean at the end where surf broke and landed you on a
golden beach. But, I asked, where does all the water come from?
Aren’t we in a desert? Good question, she said. I think there’s
water underneath.
But where was The Funnery? We drove and drove past
resort after resort, past a pyramid and the New York skyline, and
a castle, until we were almost out in the desert again. Our Global
Positioning woman, who mostly likes to admonish us by stating,
“Recalculating” when we decide to disobey her orders and detour,
finally told us to get off the #15. We were there. But where?
In North Las Vegas it turned out. This is like being in North
Hollywood, a vile area of strip malls and fast food and Brit or
Oirish slab pubs-- as opposed to the real Hollywood.
And North Las Vegas is like North Hollywood only worse.
Much industrial business. Empty lots of scrub and sand and
refuse. A lot full of cherry picker cranes and giant satellite dishes.
A lone Starbucks.
However, The Funnery stood out in and as a pleasant relief:
designed as a sort of retro resort with a blurry connection with
the 1940s, the signature image being a curvaceous busty lovely
in tight white shorts and an Uncle Sam top hat atop her tumbling
full hair.
To get to our room, to get anywhere, in The Funnery you
have to run the gauntlet of slot machines. Flashing, bashing out
stunted electronic tunes or else monotones, no longer armed with
levers, no longer with side buckets that might suddenly vomit
coins, worshipped by hunched, mostly obese clients with loser
faces, clad in shorts they should not wear, and with cigarettes

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dangling. I never saw a smile in this vale of clamorous sad slot
machines. The only glamour was in the names and graphics of
the games—muscular Asian men of yore in “The Golden Gong”,
Brad Pitt types in loin cloths on “Treasures Of Troy”, stern and
lean centurions on “Imperial Rome”, Ancient Greek athletes on
“Flame of Olympus”. All lost on the gambler/losers, sitting sullen,
intent on only one thing: to get rich quick without doing any work
requiring any skills.
At last we found peace and quiet in the sanctuary of our
room. But not sweet smells. The stale odor of tobacco filled our
room. Beyond the window and the two unlikely pine trees we
were given as a view, came the sound of amplified rock’n’roll of
the 60s kind. The band was rehearsing “Carrie Ann” and sounding
just like the Hollies record. I hastened down to the source of the
music to be in a better world.
The Club, a concert hall with no fixed seats and with doors
that can be opened so that thousands can enjoy the show from
the concrete plaza with bleachers at the back, is where the
Gordon Waller tribute was to be held. A tastefully designed venue
with an elegant backstage, very different to the garishness and
cacophony of the main concourse where the real business is
done.
Thus I have to be grateful to the high rollers for providing
the money to make this concert free. Indeed, the best seats, up
close and in the centre, were reserved for the gamblers (but
those who attended the show sat po-faced, even comatose).
I brought along for my rehearsal not only Art Accordion and
Ukie but also a copy of an Elvis book for D.J. Fontana to sign. As I
rehearsed I saw at the back a figure that must be him.
Afterwards I rushed down to introduce myself. Regina came with
me to make sure I didn’t sway or clasp my hands behind my
neck, or stutter so that I cut my tongue. This is what I tend to do
when I’m over-excited. And I was.
He’s trim and well-preserved, with a long and handsome
face and a head topped with lots of high hair in the Carl Perkins
manner. He was wearing a black windcheater with epaulettes.
Very relaxed and easy to talk to, inherited, no doubt, from his
Louisiana beginnings. I had so many questions. I wanted to be

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invited to breakfast, lunch or dinner with him. But he was
supposed to be meeting up with Joe Esposito, he said, that
evening. Joe was one of The King’s chief cronies.
Over the next day and a half I quizzed D.J. at every
opportunity—and there were many because he and his wife Karen
were loath to stay in their room due to the tobacco odor, and as
they weren’t gamblers there was really nothing else to do but
hang out around the Club theater. So, at various times, I learned
this from D.J:
He was born in Shreveport, LA. to parents who ran a grocery
store. Grandfather, an Italian immigrant, started the business.
Young Dominic never had drum lessons, never learned to read
music; his heroes were the Big Bands, especially Stan Kenton;
but soon he got a job playing in a strip club, becoming adept at
following body part movements, a useful apprenticeship for later.
In the early 1950s he joined the house band on the radio show,
“Louisiana Hayride”. It was here he joined Scotty & Bill
accompanying Elvis. It was Scotty’s idea. From then on he played
drums on all of Elvis’s records up till the early 1960s. Elvis was
the musical director/arranger on all the sessions--Chet Atkins, an
unpleasant character, was a mere executive and didn’t care for
the music, put it down in fact as a passing fad. It was Elvis who
decided to have drummer Buddy Harmon join D.J on later
sessions. Why? “Elvis liked noise”. The odd bopping percussion on
“Don’t Be Cruel” is Elvis tapping on the back of his guitar case.
Floyd Cramer played piano on the Nashville sessions but black
pianist Dudley Brooks joined the band in the Hollywood at Radio
Recorders for “Loving You”. (Brooks played the backing track
piano for “As Time Goes By” in “Casablanca”—I know because I
met him and he told me and I heard the man play at a party).
D.J. dislikes bass drums; he prefers a stripped-down kit,
simplicity.
However, when I watched him closely at rehearsal he was
pumping that bass drum four to a bar. At 79 he has a beefy rock
steady beat. No frills. Not much cymbal. Basic and right on.
He grumbled about Denny Laine not getting the end lyrics
right to “Jailhouse Rock” -–this was a vital cue for DJ to go into
the slow burlesque/strip style finale as Elvis does it.

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 Denny Laine (ex-Moody Blues and Wings) recognized me. I
was pretty impressed—the last time I saw him was around 1965.
We shared the same publicists and publisher. I reminded Denny
that he and the Moodies had introduced me to the dubious joys of
hashish at some Chelsea gathering. We’d sat in a circle as the
boys passed around a fat cigarette and I felt it only polite to
partake. Did me no good at all and I hardly touched the stuff in
later years. That probably left me out of the psychedelic hit loop.
Oh well…
Tried to introduce myself to one Terry Sylvester as he came
off stage after running through the Hollies hits. He didn’t want to
know. Very standoffish. Never heard of me. North country crude.
I told him he probably never heard if me because he wasn’t in the
original Hollies. Came along later after Graham Nash had quit. I
was on a show with the real group in Birmingham Alabama in late
1965 when Graham Nash was still there. I remember that I went
on stage and did an impression of Gene Vincent, a cripple,
dragging his gammy leg across the stage as I sang his hit “Be
Bop A Lula” and Graham Nash stood in the wings pissing with
laughter. Sylvester looked puzzled. And moved on.
Meanwhile Regina had been touring the environs and found
nothing to engage her. A slot machine is a slot machine. We used
our free VIP tickets to get into the Buffet. The range of food was
impressive—from Italian to Chinese and back. But the diners
were disgusting, the seniors being the worst offenders. They’d
race their walkers, trousers sagging, to a food display where
they’d pile on the stuff; if it fell they scooped it up and stuffed it
into their grizzled face. I know America is a fat country but this
was the zenith. Balls of jelly in aspic buffering along to a table
and then squash-spreading onto a desperate seat, flab hanging
over the sides, wobbling as arms shoveled in the non-diet food,
and as dressing and sauce slid down the sides of the mouth. No
chance for conversation, for discussion of, say, the poetry of
Blake or even the latest American Idol. We felt like Belsen victims
in such company. Regina had to shut me up. We went to bed
early. I fell asleep during “Medium”.

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SATURDAY, May 29.
Started the day at the Victory Café—a sort of World War 2
theme—with coffee. Was hailed by Jeremy Clyde of Chad &
Jeremy. They got in late last night and had made the mistake of
dining at the expensive Waverly restaurant a few yards from the
pocket book-friendly Victory. Such is the state of us erstwhile
Legends of Rock. Jeremy asked me to join him. Last time I played
with the duo was in 1966 when I was part of their tour package.
We were with the same booking agency, William Morris, and
Jeremy came to check me out while I was doing my rock & rag
act at The Troubadour in West Hollywood. He liked the act but
quietly suggested that I might reduce the sexual quotient-- too
much shaking of the bottom perhaps and please no lying full
length on the floor and panting. I agreed and we had a trouble-
free tour.
At breakfast he confessed he remembers little about that
period. These days the duo -- re-formed recently as was the case
with Peter & Gordon -- have been touring without a backing band
—guitars and keyboard. I’ve seen the act, at Citrus College here
in California, and very smooth it is, relaxing too. Perfect for our
age. Not an embarrassment of old men wiggling like kids. But
then of course Chad & Jeremy were sweet balladeers and never
hard rockers.
Jeremy told me he’s thinking of “hanging up the dancing
shoes”. Every time he leaves his London base it means he misses
auditions—and he used to be a busy actor. I noticed a paperback
at his side: “A Social History of The Battle Of Waterloo”. I didn’t
ask whether there’s a personal family interest in this—I know that
he’s related directly to the Duke of Wellington. So his great-
great-great, etc, must or may have been the man who defeated
Napoleon. A dizzying consideration to experience here in North
Las Vegas as the slot machines howled and wailed. It did cross
my mind that if Gordon had been alive and here then this concert
would be Public Schoolboy heavy. (Public School meaning, in that
crazy British way, a private school.) I mean: Jeremy, Peter,
Gordon and me were all at Public School. So were lots of the
movers and shakers of British rock: Brian Epstein, Andrew

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Oldham, Denny Cordell, Simon Napier Bell, etc. There’s a college
thesis for the asking.
In the late morning I went over to watch Chad & Jeremy do
their sound check. Chad Stuart moved to America decades ago.
He now lives with his family in Idaho. He told me from the stage
how they’d enjoyed my songs on the CD I’d slipped them
backstage at the Citrus College concert. “I’ve decided you live in
a parallel universe”. I took this as a compliment. At least he
didn’t label me as retro or nostalgia.
The concert was scheduled to start at 5pm. It would be in
four parts, climaxing with Peter Asher and the Peter & Gordon
band in a mainly power-point tribute to Gordon. His family, living
in Cornwall, had flown in from Cornwall. Two daughters and their
mother and uncle.
I was lying on my bed at 3pm when I got a call from the
promoter telling me to come on down at once with my “merch”
and set it up at a table. “You’ll probably be mobbed by fans”. I
wasn’t. But I was pleased to meet the Club booker, Kathie, who
told me that she’d interviewed me for a teen magazine in 1965 in
Buffalo, New York. I impressed her by remembering the name of
the TV program I was there for: “The Joey Reynolds Show”-- and
I added that Dizzy Gillespie was one of the guests and didn’t
seem too happy about it, staring at the floor and letting juice drip
out of his trumpet as he waited to appear. Had I been polite to
her at the interview? Yes.
Her assistant lady asked if she could just touch my arm. She
was an old fan. I hadn’t had this treatment since the 6Os. Hadn’t
run through my rock repertoire since the 1980s. (See You Tube
for that incarnation at the Forum in L.A.)
Returning to the backstage area with Regina I found D.J.
and his wife sitting there. This seemed to be their refuge. Now he
had his stagewear on—a black vest covered in musical notes and
what looked like a black tux jacket. Everybody wore black at this
concert. In the old days we wore bright costumes. But I was clad
in a colorful striped London blazer and a white shirt and keyboard
tie. The Englishman Martin Lewis, who shows up whenever
there’s a Brit Pop event, strolled up to say he’d dubbed me “The
Bertie Wooster Of Rock”. D.J. was puzzled. I told D.J. he looked

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very trim and hearty. He said he’s survived two heart attacks.
Born with the problem. Has a spider thing that bypasses the
trouble area. I produced my Ukie and we sang “A Fool Such As I”.
As the least important star I was to be the opening act. I
had peeped out a D.J’s request to see if the seats were filled,
imagining I was with Scotty and Bill at a Louisiana Hayride. The
seats were filled. And there were folks in the bleachers at the far
back. This was exciting. Like the old days. Except that -- although
inside I felt like a kid again, I knew from recent photos that I’m
really a codger, a twinkly dignified one to a certain extent and in
good shape -- but a codger just the same.
The promoter introduced me, at my suggestion, as
inhabiting a parallel universe”. And on I bounced—to a friendly
welcome. They appeared to remember my records. They even
cheered when I announced “Nervous”. I confessed that “This
Sporting life” had only reached #100 in the Billboard chart. There
were no derisive laughs. There were requests for “Robinson
Crusoe”. I’ll get to that, I promised. I started each number off at
the electric keyboard and then left to go central stage and strut
my stuff.
For my brief time in the spotlight I jumped, I bounced, I
leapt, I carried on until the crowd really loved me. They must
have me. I was like the gold-hatted high-bouncing lover in the
epigraph to “The Great Gatsby”.
I strummed Ukie—after he’d announced himself and added
he was feeling fine -- on “Crusoe”. “You Turn Me On” was the
finale and I was so worn out by that time that the panting was
real. Off I scampered to real applause, sprinkled with screams
led by Regina.
Now I could look forward to taking part in the D.J. Fontana
segment. In this I sang “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” with Art
Accordion strapped on and D.J. behind watching my behind. I did
the recitation in my finest cut-glass GB accent and when I slowed
the tempo the end D.J. followed exactly. What a moment! Only a
little later it was topped by my taking part in “Hound Dog” on the
piano. D.J. banged out the trademark machine gun drum bit. And
that was my lot for the concert.

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 I came out to watch the rest, sitting with Regina and our
friends Will Ryan and Nancy, and with Rip Masters, all of whom
had journeyed up from L.A. especially. Martin Lewis, in black,
toddled over to now dub me as “The Max Miller Of Rock”. He
wanted me to meet an Irish couple that knew me from Bluesville
days in Dublin. The husband, in a thick Irish brogue, had a copy
of a rare history of early Irish rock called “Green Bat”. I signed it
gladly. We also met Billy Hinsche, who was the Billy of Dino, Desi
& Billy and who I performed with at the Hollywood Bowl in 1965
at the KFWB Summer Spectacular, a star-studded bill that
included The Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher, The Byrds, The Sir
Douglas Quintet, Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs, The Righteous
Brothers and The Kinks. Not forgetting Donna Loren.
Billy now lives in Las Vegas. We gently moved to a far table
to enjoy “classic cocktails” and to get as far away as possible
from the rather jerky and pretentious (and not-made-for-
dancing), Wings songs of Paul McCartney -- jolly well-sung,
however, by Denny Laine.
It was well into the night—well, 9pm-ish—before Peter Asher
appeared. Peter these days resembles a successful businessman,
which he is, having produced hits for James Taylor and Linda
Ronstadt. In 1965—the anno mirabilis of my life, it seems—I had
palled up with him and Gordon on a Dick Clark Caravan of Stars
tour. Back in London I’d met his parents at the London home,
been to his office at Apple; and Gordon had visited my mother’s
flat with his current girl-friend Celia Hammond who had to be
covered in a rug due to the shortness of her skirt and its riding up
her thighs and heading fast for further regions as she lay on our
family carpet… Yes, I’d spent quite a bit of time with Peter &
Gordon.
Tonight Peter delivered a beautifully composed and heartfelt
PowerPoint history of the duo. At various points he and the band
would sing a number or join in from the screen. I saw Regina dab
away tears. At the end I joined the rest of the “legends” in a
version of “World Without Love”, the McCartney composition that
started it all. A moving moment.
Later, after we’d sat at a long table—in order of chart
importance--to sign T shirts and ticket stubs and slips of paper, I

13
made a round of another long table at the Victory Café where
Peter and the others were dining. I hadn’t been informed of such
a gathering. Martin Lewis was in the center, sitting next to Peter.
I was happy to see Peter was nursing two martinis.
Standing as you pay your respects from chair to chair is
always a good tactic, a power play: you tower above people and
you’re free to move on whenever you like and without any fuss. I
didn’t want to outstay my welcome. As my mother used to tell
me: “You’re very charming but you must learn when to shut up”.
I was introduced to Gordon’s first wife and their two
daughters. Very vivacious and sexy and smoking up a storm.
Martin Lewis rewarded me with a new dubbing: I had been
elevated as “The “Harold Nicholson of Rock”. Was this a
compliment though, seeing as how Nicholson was a bit of a
bugger boy on the side? Famous and all that.
We got to bed at 1.30 pm. My last thoughts before I went to
sleep were—that in 1956, when I was in Phillips Record Shop in
Putney High Street listening to the 78 of “Hound Dog” and loving
it, I had no thought of ever appearing onstage with the exotic
machine gun drummer from a faraway world of glamour and
tingling sensation. Or, in 1965 when I was touring with a fit and
handsome Gordon Waller, with no thoughts for the future and
what it might hold, but only a delight in the pleasures of the
immediate, that I’d ever sing at a tribute to my recently deceased
friend.

SUNDAY, May 30.

Nothing much happened on the way home. Vegas became
desert—with all its warnings of mortality—and desert became
Pasadena—home, the final resting place. We listened to part one
of a CD course produced by The Teaching Company entitled “How
To Listen To and Understand Great Music”. “Great Music”
meaning western concert music not common or garden rock. Still,
I consoled myself with the comforting understanding that my
music follows not the course of classical or any other kind of
music—it flows freely in a parallel universe, a law unto itself.
Thank you, Chad Stuart.

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 We were longing to see Rollo again, to show him we existed
and hadn’t abandoned him. We expected him to leap and rush
round in circles of excitement when he saw us. But he didn’t. He
seemed strangely cowed, and acted as if we were strangers. He
just wanted to get out of his cell in the animal shelter.
But later, to our relief, he started following his master
around the house. Life was back to normal. And normal it would
be when I entered the week and was once again no more than a
local figure in L.A. No more a rock legend with accompanying
screams. Back to the daily struggle. Back to preparing for The
Oregon Festival of American Music. Learning songs from The
Great American Songbook—a songbook that screeches to halt at
the gates of rock’n’roll.

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