Its official, 1966 is now 50 years ago - those of us who were young then, and there will have fond memories .... as I shall return to.
After some good reviews I just had to order this new book by music journalist Jon Savage, taking us through the year month by month, mainly focusing on the music - all those fab singles out every week and those groundbreaking albums. I did not realise though it would be such a heavy tome of 650 pages ... too big to carry around for casual reading on the train! Let's look at the blurb:
2016 will see the 50th anniversary of defining year in
global pop cultural history, 1966. Jon Savage's exploration of the key highs,
lows and revolutionary moments, will be at the centre of reflection on what
made that year so uniquely resonant. extraordinary year in popular culture.
'The 'Sixties', as we have come to know them, hit
their Modernist peak. A unique chemistry of ideas, substances, freedom of
expression and dialogue across pop cultural continents created a landscape of
immense and eventually shattering creativity. After 1966 nothing in the pop
world would ever be the same. The 7 inch single outsold the long-player for the
final time.
Jon Savage's 1966 is a monument to the year that
shaped the pop future of the balance of the century. Exploring canonical
artists like The Beatles, The Byrds, Velvet Underground, The Who and The
Kinks, 1966 also goes much deeper into the social and cultural heart
of the decade through unique archival primary sources.
From Haight Ashbury to pirate radio, via the prosecution of
the Rollling Stones and the arrival of the first double-album by a major artist
(Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde), 1966 represents both a watershed and a high
water mark in post war culture,
This book has music at its heart – whether looking at Joe
Meek, Motown, Stax, the Velvet Underground, the Byrds, the Kinks, the Who, Jimi
Hendrix, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band or Tom Jones; music both reflected the
times and changed them. From songs of protest – to those lampooning the
protesters - from folk rock to soul and the emergence of rock, music pours
forth from the pages and will make you reach for your own collections to play
those songs, which still sound so fresh and relevant today
England was at the forefront of the new changes in the air, a trend picked up by TIME magazine with their Swinging London cover story ..... other British successes included all those trendy films, the new Hovercraft crossing the channel on a cushion of air, the Harrier Jump Jet, and of course England winning the World Cup. But what did 1966 mean to me? How was I living then?
Well I was just 20, and finally left my bedsitter/furnished room in North London where I had been since I arrived in London in April 1964, aged 18. My younger brother had arrived in London too and took over my room, as I moved on .... I had found a room in smart Bayswater, sharing a large apartment in Queens Gardens - where I played Bob Dylan and Francoise Hardy 4-track Extended Play disks, and Paul Simon's "I Am A Rock", and The Beatles RUBBER SOUL was still top of the charts - as would their REVOLVER later that year. . I could walk up to Notting Hill Gate at night, for late night movies at the Classic Cinema, and began exploring the city and going to the theatre. There were some good shows that year: FUNNY GIRL with that new sensation Barbara Streisand - which I saw from the front row! and THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN up in the cheap seats at the Old Vic. THE KING'S MARE was an amusing comedy about Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, which I enjoyed and some evening when I was out in theatreland I passed the stage door and there was actress Jane Merrow so we had a great conversation - as she sang a song in the play based on a Bob Dylan tune ... I had liked her in THE SYSTEM - it turned out she was David Hemmings' girlfriend at the time. I did not know then that he was off making BLOW-UP for Antonioni at the time - that would be the sensation of 1967 in the then swinging city. We prowled around the Prince of Wales theatre too hoping (in vain) to see Streisand - but got her co-star Kay Medford instead. There was also Ingrid Bergman's success in A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, I got the cast autographs for that - and was taken backstage by a showbiz acquintance to meet the cast of the hilarious THE ANNIVERSARY and they all signed the programme: Michael Crawford, Sheila Hancock, Mona Washbourne, June Ritchie, Jack Hedley, James Cossins - most of them were in the 1968 film.
The movies just kept coming: I joined the crowd at the premiere of MODESTY BLAISE hoping Monica Vitti would be there, she was not but I saw Dirk Bogarde with Rosella Falk (Mrs Fothergill) on his arm, Monica, Dirk and Terry were my pin-ups of the year.. Other hits of the year were Bergman's PERSONA, Lelouch's UNE HOMME ET UNE FEMME (where Anouk Aimee was perfection, when not endlessly fiddling with her hair), and Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck wonderful together in ARABESQUE - a very 60s confection. WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? was a stunner Malle's VIVA MARIA has the 'house full' sign up when a friend and I turned up to see it at The Curzon in Mayfair. (still here, for now, as the developers move in). "Films and Filming" and "Sight & Sound" kept us up to date with all the new movies.
I used to go to the big Classic cinema in Baker Street for revivals (not having a television then), and that new vegetarian store Cranks had opened next to it, I was in there one day and there was a small Japanese woman shopping next to me - I knew she was Yoko Ono, then (before John Lennon) a performance artist and avant garde film-maker (her film with all those naked bottoms!) who featured in those new Sunday supplements. Another Sunday supplement regular was artist David Hockney - I went too to one of those new gay bars in Pembridge Road, Notting Hill - and recognised him there - looking at me, with the peroxide hair and the round glasses - perhaps he was over from California? I did not linger though and left after finishing my drink .... perhaps if I had stayed I might have been one of those boys in a blue pool ...
It was time though to move again - we moved a lot in those days, sharing apartments for maybe 6 monhs or so. Now it was on to West Kensington sharing a pad with 2 friends of a friend - it was just a temporary thing - Julie Christie it seemed lived in an apartment block there which we passed a lot, but never saw her., I saw that famous World Cup win there on a small black and white set (it was still the era of just two TV channels - imagine! - which closed down early and no colour) - no wonder young people were out making music and being creative and creating their own events.
Finally, that autumn it was down to Clapham South, where I became a South London boy, sharing another flat with Stanley - who turned out to be my best friend, until he died in 1992 - we sharing flats on and off up to the early '70s and again later in the mid-80s before romance took me off to the South Coast for a decade or more .... We finally got television then, and that new trendy station BBC2 opened - LATE NIGHT LINE UP, MAN ALIVE documentaries - including one on those still illegal gays dancing in their clubs and wearing white polo neck sweaters; the popular soap THE NEWCOMERS, and crime series Z-CARS and even DIXON OF DOCK GREEN; DR WHO (Patrick Troughton) at Saturday teatime followed by THE SIMON DEE SHOW - all in shades of gray, and Sunday afternoon drama serials like a great THREE MUSKETEERS with Jeremy Brett, and KENILWORTH.on BBC2. It was also the year of that hard-ditting drama CATHY COME HOME and saw the start of Alf Garnett in TILL DEATH DO US PART. Later in the decade we loved those comedy shows like ME MAMMY (Anna Manahan and Milo O'Shea) and BEGGAR MY NEIGHBOUR where June Whitfield (still going now) had a knowing twinkle in her eye whenever mentioning a neighbour who "lived down by the maisonettes and was good to his mother".
We began frequenting the West End coffee bars and early gay discos when the teens danced to Tamla Motown - The LE DEUCE in D'Arblay Street was a particular favourite.. So, 1966 ended on a high - but 1967 would be even better: as psychedelia hit London (we already liked that West Coast sound of The Mamas and Papas, and the New York combo The Lovin' Spoonful), BLOW-UP hit town in March and it was like seeing oneself up there on the screen, and then The Beatles released SERGEANT PEPPER .... Stan and I and Linda, the girl upstairs, went stark raving mad. We went to see The Stax Tour, just before Otis Redding took that fatal flight. 1968 brought Aretha Franklin to town and I joined the hippie set seeing The Doors and Jefferson Airplane at the Roundhouse at Camden, where everyone was on acid - ditto at 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY in Cinerama and so much more, like going to the Middle Earth club in Covent Garden and getting the hippie magazine "International Times" and that new weekly listings mag "Time Out" ... Above right, me sporting the tousled Rolling Stone look on Clapham Common in '66.
In ancient 
Here are some shots from the 1959 version: Heston and Boyd; plus Bette Davis visiting her old director Wyler.
The photos here are by two of the main photographers who knew and worked with her: namely Milton Greene who look some of the best portraits of her in the mid-1950s (he had become her friend and they set up her production company which made THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL in 1956), and Douglas Kirkland who did those - yes, iconic - shots of her wrapped in that silk sheet, in 1961. (Other great MM photographers were - as mentoned before - Eve Arnold and Bob Willoughby, George Barris who did those great beach photos with her in 1962, and Bert Stern whose "Last Sitting" caught a darker Monroe ...
Idly looking at Robert Aldrich's 1961 western THE LAST SUNSET - not seen that since I was a kid - on TV yesterday afternoon, I was again struck by how watchable and magnetic Dorothy Malone is. Maybe not a star of the front rank, she was one of those reliable ladies - like Vera Miles, Shelley Winters or Martha Hyer - who forged a long career, and was probably at her cinematic peak in the 1950s. 
Dorothy first caught one's attention with that scene in the bookshop with Bogart in Hawks' THE BIG SLEEP in 1946 - even then she was someone unusual. As she matured her sultry, rather bruised looks made her a Hollywood blonde to watch - up there with Janet Leigh, Kim Novak and the others: Lana Turner, Grace Kelly, Judy Holliday, Jayne Mansfield ..... Dorothy was one of those girls who fitted in well out west, being an expert horsewoman - among her westerns are solid items like WARLOCK in 1959, FIVE GUNS WEST, QUANTREZ, and TENSION AT TABLE ROCK. 
Her other plentiful credits include YOUNG AT HEART, the army wife seducing young Tab Hunter in BATTLE CRY (both 1954), romancing Liberace in SINCERELY YOURS - Dorothy made everything look convincing; ARTISTS AND MODELS, MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES, TOO MUCH TOO SOON, THE LAST VOYAGE, FATE IS THE HUNTER and her final screen credit BASIC INSTINCT in 1992. 
Worth another look perhaps - is THE REVENANT a souped-up new version with all the technical wizardy now available - including that very realistic bear? The names may have been changed for the Harris version, but it seems he is playing Hugh Glass - as DiCaprio does in the Inarritu new classic. 
Then there's Robert Redford as JEREMIAH JOHNSON, another mountain man in the wilderness in Sidney Pollack's 1972 western - not the same story of course, but it shows that sagas of mountain men coping with everything nature (and other humans) can throw at them are nothing new .....those trappers and mountain men also feature of course in films like YELLOWSTONE KELLY and HOW THE WEST WAS WON (both Stewart and Fonda as trappers). Plus of course one of Kevin Costner's biggest hits DANCES WITH WOLVES, in 1990, (which even beat Scorsese's GOODFELLAS as Best Film) where his disillusioned cavalry officer leaves 'civilisation' to live in the wilderness and mix with the Natives ... we loved it at the time, don't know how I would feel about it now. 
Saunas must have been a new concept then, as the feature goes into all the details of what having a sauna entails. There is lots of saucy banter here, and the boys get fed too: "huge cuts of roast beef, turkey, ham, scandanavian cheese and lots of potato salad". One gets pretty hungry working up a sweat - fruit juice, soda and beer were also on tap, then it was time for a nap. Eating and drinking at the sauna does seem a little counter-productive ...
Scott Brady went on to play the Dancin' Kid in that cult western JOHNNY GUITAR, one of my enduring favourites and the first film I ever saw aged 8, suddenly it seems a lot gayer now. He also paid his dues in many westerns like THE MAVERICK QUEEN with Stanwyck. It seems he did not marry until later in life ("The seemingly one-time confirmed bachelor decided to settle
down in 1967 at age 43") and developed into a reliable character actor, with later roles in THE CHINA SYNDROME and GREMLINS (he died aged 60 in 1985). Hugh O'Brien, 90 now, of course did lots of westerns too (SEMINOLE, TAZA SON OF COCHISE, WHITE FEATHER, BROKEN LANCE) while Rock and Tony were soon heading for the A-list, leaving layouts like this behind them. Thirty years later in 1980 when perhaps past their prime they were reunited for the enjoyable camp farrago THE MIRROR CRACK'D. 
It is virtually a two-hander for Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay as we get absorbed in their lives and wonder how it is going to pan out. We grew up watching them in screen since their early '60s triumphs (BILLY LIAR, GEORGY GIRL). Sir Tom has quietly excelled over the years on film, stage and television. Charlotte was 'The Look' as directors like Visconti, Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet wanted her for their films, then came the controversial THE NIGHT PORTER, as she settled in France and became (like Romy Schneider before her) a fixture of French cinema, with some adventerous choices (MAX MON AMOUR, HEADING SOUTH) and she excelled in those Francois Ozon films like the unsettling UNDER THE SAND and SWIMMING POOL. Lately she has been back on British television in the underwhelming second series of BROADCHURCH and LONDON SPY. Here, she mesmerises under Andrew Haigh's direction as Kate reacts to Geoff and what she finds out about him. 
We leave them at the party with that long close-up showing emotional devastation as "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" plays on and on ...
Glenn Frey (1948-2016), aged 67. Another '70s rock legend gone - not another cancer death, but caused by complications after intestinal surgery and pneumonia. It was fascinating seeing the opinionated Frey in that recent Eagles documentary on the history of the band, he of course was a founding member and co-wrote a lot of their hits, with Don Henley. He was one of the main singers in the band, as well as producer and later did some acting, during the band's hiatus. He sang lead vocals on hits like "Take It Easy", "Tequila Sunrise", "Already Gone", "New Kid In Town" and had a successful solo career too. We liked The Eagles a lot back then, and still get a kick from them now.
Robert Banks Stewart (1931-2016), aged 84. British (Scottish actually) writer who created some ground-breaking crime series for the BBC in the late 70s and early 80s, set in attractive locations: mainly SHOWSTRING which I loved, with Trevor Eve as the crumpled private eye/radio presenter, set around Bristol, in 1979 and 80, but when Eve did not wish to do a third series, Stewart came up with BERGERAC set in Jersey, another huge hit from 1980-1990). Stewart certainly knew how to write for prime-time television, and also wrote early scripts for shows like CALLAN and THE AVENGERS, and also produced LOVEJOY and THE DARLING BUDS OF MAY and MY UNCLE SILAS. 
Of course I spanned the Bowie era, in the '70s we had to have those influential albums, and iconic singles. After he left Ziggy Stsrdust behind Bowie developed into a fascinating man and artist as he turned to acting and taking up soul and dance and then that Berlin period .... I loved the YOUNG AMERICANS album which I had on cassette and played all the time, and STATION TO STATION: "Golden Years", "Fame", "Win", "Fashion", "Blue Jean", "Boys Keep Swinging" etc. I loved his version of the ballad "Wild Is The Wind", and then the 80s glossy look of LET'S DANCE with Nile Rodgers, and those collaborations with Queen: "Under Pressure".(love his and Annie Lennox's version), with Jagger in the fun throwaway "Dancing in the Street", and "Hello Spaceboy" with the Pet Shop Boys. The Berlin albums though, with Brian Eno, will prove more infuential - LOW, HEROES, LODGER ... I love his "Putting out fire with gasoline" used in Schrader's CAT PEOPLE. 
Vilmos Zsigmond (1930-2016), aged 85. Four time Academy Award nominee Vilmos Zsigmond, who won the
award as director of photography for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, had left his native Hungary after the Russian
invasion in 1956 and started his career in Hollywood (after a couple of shorts
in his native country) photographing low budget exploitation films, eventually working up to projects like Robert Altman's McCABE & MRS MILLER and THE LONG GOODBYE, giving them his distinctive look, Brian DePalma kept him busy with that favourite of mine OBSESSION, and BLOW-OUT, and he lensed Michael Cimino's THE DEER HUNTER. and HEAVEN'S GATE, plus Rydell's THE ROSE and Boorman's DELIVERANCE Another essential 1970s Director of Photography then, and according to IMDB he had several projects lined up for 2016.
Well I was just 20, and finally left my bedsitter/furnished room in North London where I had been since I arrived in London in April 1964, aged 18. My younger brother had arrived in London too and took over my room, as I moved on .... I had found a room in smart Bayswater, sharing a large apartment in Queens Gardens - where I played Bob Dylan and Francoise Hardy 4-track Extended Play disks, and Paul Simon's "I Am A Rock", and The Beatles RUBBER SOUL was still top of the charts - as would their REVOLVER later that year. . I could walk up to Notting Hill Gate at night, for late night movies at the Classic Cinema, and began exploring the city and going to the theatre. There were some good shows that year: FUNNY GIRL with that new sensation Barbara Streisand - which I saw from the front row! and THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN up in the cheap seats at the Old Vic. THE KING'S MARE was an amusing comedy about Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, which I enjoyed and some evening when I was out in theatreland I passed the stage door and there was actress Jane Merrow so we had a great conversation - as she sang a song in the play based on a Bob Dylan tune ... I had liked her in THE SYSTEM - it turned out she was David Hemmings' girlfriend at the time. I did not know then that he was off making BLOW-UP for Antonioni at the time - that would be the sensation of 1967 in the then swinging city. We prowled around the Prince of Wales theatre too hoping (in vain) to see Streisand - but got her co-star Kay Medford instead. There was also Ingrid Bergman's success in A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, I got the cast autographs for that - and was taken backstage by a showbiz acquintance to meet the cast of the hilarious THE ANNIVERSARY and they all signed the programme: Michael Crawford, Sheila Hancock, Mona Washbourne, June Ritchie, Jack Hedley, James Cossins - most of them were in the 1968 film.
