---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 13:35:13 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Remembering the Sixties
Remembering the Sixties
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/document_details.asp?CatID=102&DocID=905>
12 December 2001
by Dominic Hilton
The 1960s were a piece of hash for one who was not only there, but remembers.
I shall never forget the first time I saw The Beatles. They were playing in
the basement of the Cavern Club in Liverpool, and I arrived just as they
were packing up their instruments. I had never heard a sound like it all
that clanging and crashing and zipping. They all looked so German and after
chewing my nails off I dared go and tell them. "Yeah, we've been in Hamburg
like," they all said, in harmony. "We practically are German, are German,
aaaaaahhhhhhhh German." That night I had my first drink a vodka and
loganberry spritzer. It was bought for me by Brian Epstein, who kindly
drove me home. I had never tasted anything like it and probably never will.
In the car, Epstein said to me, "So, what do you think?" "When?" I said,
and he made a note of it, nodding and saying, "You're right, you're right.
It's Ringo, isn't it?"
The next summer I saw them play at Shea stadium in New York. That year I
had bought seven thousand copies of 'Love me Do' and eight thousand of 'I
Wanna Hold Your Hand', all of which were scratched. By now the band were
stratospherically huge, and like a nose on the face of the earth. As luck
would have it, Brian Epstein let me fly to America on the Beatles' plane,
selling me the ticket at a reasonable price considering the eminence of my
fellow passengers. I tried complaining about my records, but Epstein just
smiled at me, and offered me a bonbon.
The plane was spectacular like all the others, except with the Beatles in
it. I remember how John would run up and down the aisles pretending to be a
plane crash, and how we would all laugh, except Paul who would say, "Oh,
sit down you prat". At Shea I screamed and screamed until the girl next to
me got off my foot. The lads were marvelous, and remembered all the lyrics
to their songs and only missed the occasional chord change. "What do you
think?" I asked some woman who had swooned into my arms. "About what?" she
said, before the ambulance men took her away. I reported her comment to
Brian Epstein who took a note of it, saying, "She's right, too much symbol."
The next summer I had my second drink. I was giving the band a lift to
Abbey Road studios when someone tapped on my shoulder and handed me a
flask. "What's this?" I asked. "Cream soda," John said, and everyone
laughed, except Paul who called John "a prat". I took a swig and
immediately crashed the car. I was trapped under the steering wheel, and
thinking only of the band, I told them to make a run for it, but they
already had, across a zebra crossing. I was discovered only two days later,
and after a few months in hospital, I re-acquainted myself with the Fab
Four at one of Epstein's notorious fondue parties. (That was Brian, always
ahead of the game.) "You're still alive?" they asked as we traded
anecdotes. After the After Eights had done the rounds, I told them about a
friend of mine, Eleanor Rigby, who kept her face in a jar. I had no idea
what I meant, but it sounded deep and I was understandably nervous.
Over the next year, my relationship with the band grew steadily. They began
to invite me into the studio and even offered to pay when I scored for
them. They were so like that: kind and down to earth. I recall one time
when I handed Paul a fifty kilo bag of marijuana and he said to me, "Got
any skins?" I hadn't, so I went out and bought a lorry load, just like
that. They always inspired that kind of loyalty. True, I was arrested and
spent the next twelve months in Wormwood Scrubs, but I presume Paul got his
skins from someone else.
The next summer The Beatles were set to become the biggest thing since
Jesus, when John complained, and Jesus never got a look in. We hooked up in
India, where, by pure coincidence, I had been sent as a government spy. We
were all sitting cross-legged on the floor, except me who sat on my crossed
arms, when I suggested to George that instead of his idea of going into the
tea business, he should consider learning to play the sitar. "Hey, that's a
great idea," he said, as I pulled the rickshaw over to Ravi Shankar's place
in the hills. We sat for hours as George perfected the right way round to
hold the instrument, and jammed over tea and toast until the moon sat full
in the sky, and my head began to ache.
That summer I had my first experience with LSD when Paul filled my 500mg
jar of Zinc and Vitamin C tablets with acid tabs. It was like nothing I had
ever known and for three months I had a series of nasty trips in which I
was convinced I was Donovan. I began to paint kaleidoscopic landscapes onto
the walls of public lavatories, and enjoyed a period of limited fame as a
guru for three teenage girls, until they gave me up and joined a Swiss
convent. "But I am the eggman!" I insisted, "Alright then, the Walrus!" But
they looked at me as if I was mad, and I went into rehab where the scores
were great.
It was a productive period for me, and I burnt more holes in sofas than
there were in Blackburn, Lancashire.
That spring we shot the cover of Sgt. Pepper. It was my first incident with
a firearm, and the record was shattered over the room. The police turned
up, but John just told them it was me and I was carried away, saving the
reputation of the band. I had been angered by the band's incessant teasing
of me after I discovered I had somehow stood just out of the camera frame
in the photograph. I'm to the right of the guy who is top right, and missed
my place in history by a couple of inches. I served my time, and prison was
a mecca for cheap smack, which I sent home to mother to give to the band.
That next summer I went on my first protest march. It was a powerful
experience and apart from me spraining my ankle I really felt the winds of
change blowing through my beard. Finally, I was part of a herd, all
travelling for the sake of it. We sang the Marseillaise, until some fools
ruined it by turning it into some song about how all we need is love. The
Beatles, bless them, were furious, but still managed to make some money out
of it. They were full of nous those boys. I'm not ashamed to say I loved them.
The year after that, my ankle fully recovered, I was lounging in the studio
with Yoko and Linda when we all recorded the White Album and I wrote Helter
Skelter, the name of which they enthusiastically adopted for one of their
songs. They had all these plans for a really crazy album cover when I
suggested we give up and go home. And thanks to my timely request, the
White album was born. The rest, of course, is legend.
Later that decade, as the LSD slowly began to wear off and I learned to
speak again, we all collectivised at John's nine thousand acre mansion a
commune that he shared with Yoko and the servants. By now, we were going in
and out of style, although, as ever, we were guaranteed to raise a smile,
particularly when we wore those velvet suits and heeled boots. We started
to argue about the meaning of possessions. John and Yoko said they meant
nothing as we took a turn around the grounds in one of the deeper yellow
Rolls Royces. George agreed, saying it was your inner spiritual health that
meant everything and he would gladly give up his seventeen castles if
somebody just proposed a better way to house his cats. I was about to
mention a sanctuary I knew when Paul jumped in arguing that material
possessions had nothing to do with happiness. "What about fun?" I asked,
and he conceded to my astute observation. Linda insisted that meat was the
only possession worth having, until Paul reminded her that it was the other
way round meat was not worth having. "Oh yeah," she said, and we all
laughed at how suckers would some day buy frozen vegetarian meals shaped
like meat.
But the developing rifts were unavoidable. John and Paul were not talking,
especially after I told them both that the other hated their wives, and
still nobody was talking to Ringo. Eventually things just petered out and I
moved to the Orkney islands for some recuperation. The band, wealthier than
in the Fifties, entered a new decade with fresh ideas about God, Yoko, Frog
Choruses and Yogic flying. I knew things were over when John wrote "How Do
You Sleep?" about my insomnia, an unforgivable and vicious attack on a part
of my life I had tried to keep a secret. Now, older and wiser, I know
valium is the only answer.
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Dominic Hilton writes a fortnightly column for openDemocracy.
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