Bob Dylan, John Tams, Magic Michael & the Commissionaire

by  Stuart Penney

Whenever Bob Dylan’s 1966 UK Tour is discussed, talk inevitably turns to the infamous “Judas” incident from the Free Trade Hall, Manchester. But there were 13 other British dates on that tour (plus one in Ireland) and on May 16, one day before the “Judas” show, I saw Dylan play in Sheffield, just 40 miles away across the Pennines.

Our story begins some weeks earlier when I was dispatched to the Gaumont cinema, located in Barker's Pool, smack-bang in the city centre, to secure tickets for a group of college friends (tickets went on sale March 21, fact fans). This was not nearly as straightforward as it sounds. Ticket buying in the pre-internet age was a painstaking, labour intensive affair. Telephone booking was some years away (in fact, many British households were still without landlines in 1966, most had to use the public phone box on the corner) and purchasing concert tickets involved turning up at the box office in person to conduct a cash-only transaction with the grim-faced matron behind the glass.

Until it became a multiplex in the late 60s the Gaumont cinema juggled the big movies of the day with regular live music events.  Together with Sheffield City Hall, conveniently situated just yards away across Barker's Pool, it was arguably the most important concert venue in town.  Both had hosted shows by the Beatles in recent months and Dylan played at the City Hall a year earlier in 1965. A pair of box offices were situated at either side of the Gaumont entrance and buying tickets involved a curious double queuing method out on the street alongside (but separate from) moviegoers who were waiting to see Alfie or The Good, The Bad & The Ugly or whatever the latest flick was.

The Commissionaire

The task of policing the twin queues was entrusted to a commissionaire, of the type still seen outside swanky hotels and restaurants in London but hardly anywhere else these days.  I’m guessing this chap was a retired war veteran and he certainly had a military bearing with his peaked cap, white gloves and burgundy greatcoat which almost brushed the ground as he walked.  The ensemble was completed by twin rows of brass buttons and, to borrow a line from the great Ivor Cutler, gold epaulettes like bath brushes.

The commissionaire strutted up and down outside the Gaumont with a self-important air intoning the same line over and over: “Queue this side for the film, queue that side for, er, Bob Die-Lon tickets” he indicated with a wave of his immaculately gloved hand.  He was clearly having trouble getting to grips with the name and those of us wishing to see “Bob Die-Lon” sniggered at his mispronunciation. Eventually he gave up and changed his mantra to “This side for the film and that side for the, er, folk singer” which only made us giggle even more.  Hard to believe now, but in 1966 it was likely many people had never heard the name spoken out loud and the commissionaire was simply pronouncing it phonetically. Not long after, I worked for a London music publisher where some of the older staff would pronounce Joan Baez’s name as Joan “Baize”, as per the snooker table covering.  Incidentally, the Dylan tickets cost 12 shillings each. For younger readers, that translates to 60p.  Outrageous, I know.

John Tams

Finally, the big day arrived, and I took my seat in the Gaumont alongside John Tams, then just a school friend but later to become properly famous in the world of folk music and theatre as a member of The Albion Band and part of the cast of the TV series Sharpe, for which he also wrote and performed some of the music.

Old beyond his years, Tams cut a kind of benevolent Flashman figure and carried himself with a casual self-confidence the rest of us were lacking.  He dressed in the latest boho chic, sported an impressive Brian Jones-style haircut and most galling of all, he had a desperately attractive girlfriend.  Even then Tams was a passable guitarist with a great singing voice and while we were still struggling with the basic chords to Dylan and the Beatles, he had many of the trickier Bert Jansch and Tom Paxton tunes down and knew loads of traditional material besides.  At 17 he was already the complete package and his opinion of the Dylan concert would be sought many times in the coming weeks.

Along with the Albion Band, Tams also recorded with Home Service and Muckram Wakes and later released a trio of critically acclaimed solo albums.  He has received a string of radio, TV and theatre awards and performed for the Queen and members of the Royal Family. He was a musical director and actor at the National Theatre from 1976 to 1985 and his work on the 2007 stage musical War Horse has been described as the most successful show ever staged by the National, receiving six Olivier Awards nominations. 

John Tams pictured in 2016

Magic Michael
Shortly before the Gaumont lights dimmed I heard a commotion at the entrance to our block of seats and my heart sank.  The usher was directing a noisy, animated figure toward us. But instead of walking up the aisle like everyone else, he was clambering over the empty seats, laughing and waving.  Michael Cousins had arrived. Michael (or Mick as he was known then) was a childhood friend and we lived in the same block of flats on the Gleadless Valley council estate in the Sheffield suburbs.  Loud, hyperactive and, even at that early age, quite possibly unhinged, he couldn’t have been more different to my cool college pals. When he found out I was planning to attend the Dylan concert he had unceremoniously invited himself along and demanded I buy a ticket for him, too.  

Onstage with "Jesus" at Glastonbury 1971

I have a wealth of childhood stories relating to Michael, one of the most memorable being the time we were almost beaten up by a 20 stone steel factory worker.  The man was hobbling along our Gleadless Valley street on crutches and, as we walked past him, deep in conversation, Michael inexplicably adopted an exaggerated Chimpanzee-like gait which the fellow took to be a cruel mocking of his disability (just a broken leg, as I recall).  “Come ‘ere, you cheeky bastards! I’ll fookin’ kill ya! I know where you live!” he yelled and began limping after us at surprising speed for a man using a walking aid. Because of the crutches, however, he was handicapped in every sense of the word and we escaped unharmed. But it was no thanks to Michael, who found the entire episode hilarious.

Like John Tams, Michael would also make a name for himself in the entertainment industry, but in a very different field.  Within a year of moving to London he re-invented himself as Magic Michael and became a fixture of the festival scene where his acid-fueled stream of consciousness songs and impromptu performance art found a receptive audience.  Described by Nick Kent in the NME as "Ladbroke Grove's answer to Wild Man Fischer” he was once booed off stage at a Hawkwind concert. "This is believed to be the first and only time such an event has occurred" wrote Kent.  

In the early 70s I would often run into him in the Portobello Road area but, as time went by, these meetings became increasingly heavy going (for me, at least). Michael's substance intake eventually severed his already slender grasp on reality and normal conversation became almost impossible. Finally, it got to the point where, if I saw him coming, I would cross the road in order to avoid the inevitable earbashing. Sad but true.

In 1971 Michael appeared, naked from the waist down (yes, you read that right) at the second Glastonbury festival, (then a free event) together with William Jellett, the infamous, not to say ubiquitous, hippie dancer, known to everyone (including himself) as “Jesus.” Those with a strong constitution can view this performance in the documentary film “Glastonbury Fayre” directed by Nicolas Roeg.  He also turned up on the Greasy Truckers Party double album recorded live at the Roundhouse in 1972, alongside Hawkwind, Man and Brinsley Schwarz, where his improvised piece “Music Belongs to the People” runs for almost 10 minutes.

Magic Michael in Trafalgar Square with Allen Ginsberg and his father Louis

Michael later worked with Brian Eno and Nirvana's Patrick Campbell-Lyons, as well as auditioning (unsuccessfully) for the role of vocalist with Can.  During 1976 he recorded with Nick Lowe, contributing the song "Little by Little" for the Stiff label compilation A Bunch of Stiffs.  In 1980 he released the single "Millionaire", recorded with Damned members Rat Scabies and Captain Sensible.  The last time I saw him was September 18, 1976, backstage at the Queen free concert in Hyde Park. It was the tail-end of a long, hot summer and Michael was working as a scaffolder, helping to erect the stage. As always, he was acting the giddy goat, balancing the scaffolding poles across his shoulders in an amusing fashion and strutting around the place (you had to be there).

A short-lived Facebook page for Michael appeared around 2014 with talk of new music, but it quickly disappeared. At the time of writing that was the last we heard of him.  

So, with thoughtful, dependable John Tams sitting to my left and Magic Michael fidgeting noisily on the right, I assumed the evening couldn’t get more surreal.  I was wrong.

Bob Dylan

“This never happens with my electric guitar” muttered Bob as he struggled to tune up before “Mr. Tambourine Man”.  Seven songs into the acoustic half of the show and it was the first time Dylan had spoken. It was also the first song of the set to receive anything resembling audience recognition, with a smattering of applause greeting the opening line. Delivered, for the most part, as per the record, “Mr Tambourine Man” went off-piste toward the end when Bob abandoned the script and began to suck and blow the harmonica like a man possessed. It was as if he'd suddenly realised he had 20 notes at his disposal and was determined to use them all.

I don’t remember if there was any kind of introduction, but 30 minutes earlier the heavy velvet cinema curtains had creaked open and Dylan appeared in the spotlight.  Pipe cleaner thin and looking like the coolest man on Earth with that iconic haircut, he teetered across the stage on Cuban heels and dressed in the familiar hound's-tooth check suit and polka dot shirt combination.  People have based entire careers on Bob Dylan’s 1966 look and I’m not just talking about John Cooper Clarke. Marc Bolan was clearly influenced by Bob’s wild curls and even Hendrix was inspired to grow his own ‘fro out to impressive proportions after seeing Dylan during this tour.  We were witnessing one of the truly defining looks of rock and roll.

The first half of the concert featured a folkie-appeasing acoustic set which was far more edgy than the previous year’s solo shows had been.  Whatever chemicals Bob was using gave his performance a new intensity and his harmonica playing was quite bizarre. Onstage he had a stool and a pint glass of water in which lived four or five assorted harps.  He would select one, shake the water out of it and painstakingly install it in his Heath Robinson-style neck harness. This curious ritual would then be repeated for almost every song. But instead of playing the harmonica fills as we knew them from the records, he simply went up and down the instrument randomly, blowing and sucking furiously on every available note.  It was surreal to witness but it sounded just fine.

Opening with a near-perfect “She Belongs To Me”, the first surprise was Bob’s powerful vocals and exaggerated enunciation, which at times made him sound almost like a Dylan impersonator, albeit a very good one.  Our parents tried to tell us he couldn’t sing, but that was never even close to the truth. He didn’t sound like anybody else, it’s true, but in 1966 his voice was as good as anyone in rock and better than most. As we noted on The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 version, during this period Bob changed the “She Belongs To Me” line “She wears an Egyptian ring” to “Egyptian RED ring”.  A tiny modification, perhaps, but a typically inscrutable one. 

Officially Blonde On Blonde was released on the same day as the Sheffield concert, May 16, but in reality, the album didn’t show up in UK stores until several weeks later.  Consequently, the four Blonde On Blonde tracks in the set were performed to audiences who were hearing them for the first time.  Add the equally unfamiliar “Tell Me Momma” to the list and that’s five brand new songs Bob brought to the party.

The first new song of the night was “Fourth Time Around”, evidently a parody of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood”, delivered in waltz time.  Sitting here today with a lifetime of rock gigs under our collective belt, it’s strange to reflect that, in 1966, many people had never been to more than a handful of shows and had yet to develop the concert-goer’s protocol we now take for granted. Consequently, lines like “Your words aren’t clear, you’d better spit out your gum” were greeted with loud guffaws from the embryonic Bobcats.  It was the kind of response you might hear at a Randy Newman concert today, but it seemed decidedly out of place at a Dylan show.  Another unfamiliar song, the sublime “Visions Of Johanna”, followed and once again there was nervous audience sniggering at lines like “Hear the one with the mustache say, ‘Jeez’ I can’t find my knees”. 

Things got back on track with the familar “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and the word-a-thon that is “Desolation Row”, before the third new tune of the night made an appearance.  “Just Like A Woman” is not your typical Bob song. It has a middle eight for a start, a rare thing indeed in the Dylan canon. Less organic than much of his catalogue, it seems more a product of the songwriter’s craft than simply a vehicle on which to hang the stream of consciousness wordplay he was writing at the time. 

The aforementioned “Mr. Tambourine Man” ended the first half in fine style and Bob left the stage to the first generous ovation of the evening.  We didn’t know it, but we had just witnessed the calm before the storm.

As the curtains re-opened for the second half the stage lights remained dimmed.  In the gloom we saw the red stand-by lights of the guitar amplifiers as several shadowy figures shuffled on and plugged in.  The Hawks! A spotlight found Dylan and I had just a second to register that his acoustic guitar had been replaced by a black Fender Telecaster before all hell broke loose and a glorious cacophony filled the theatre.  It was louder than anything I’d experienced before, and the sound was massively distorted. But it was also unbelievably exciting.

“Tell Me Momma”, the fourth unfamiliar number in the set (and the only new one not from Blonde On Blonde) arrived like a hammer blow.  This strange, fire breathing monster of a song deserves some explanation.  Dylan has never released a studio version and it has only ever been performed in concert 15 times, all of them on the 1966 tour.  It was first played on February 5 at White Plains, New York and made its exit on May 27 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, never to return (to date). 

“I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” started life two years earlier as a mid-tempo acoustic song on Another Side Of Bob Dylan but live it was transformed into a disjointed heavy rock stomper.  Bob’s spoken intro “It used to be like that, but now it goes like this” disclaimer was repeated most nights throughout the ’66 tour.

On the face of it “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” seemed like an unusual choice to perform live, but again it has a story to tell.  Firstly, it was the only song in the entire set not written by Dylan. This Eric von Schmidt adaptation of a 30s song first appeared on Bob’s 1962 self-titled acoustic debut album and two years later The Animals covered it (as “Baby Let Me Take You Home”) for their first single.  The Newcastle band followed it up with their monster hit “The House Of The Rising Sun” another non-original song from Dylan’s first LP. It’s thought that Bob was so enamoured with the Animals’ rocked-up versions of those songs it inspired his change to electric music, which in turn gave rise to the entire folk-rock movement.  So, we have a lot to thank Eric Burdon and his boys for, it seems.

Mickey Jones released his home movies of
the 1966 tour as a DVD

The lead into “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” featured a long stream of consciousness preamble from Bob about a painter who lives down in Mexico.  Bob wasn’t making much sense here and if I didn’t know better I might suggest he’d been at the jazz Woodbines during the interval. Again, he gave a variation of this rambling narrative several times during the tour.  This was for many years the only song from the tour to receive an official release, with a live version recorded in Liverpool on May 14 (two days before Sheffield) appearing as the B-side of the single “I Want You” in June 1966.

Until now the audience had listened in quiet reverence to the electric set, possibly because they’d been pinned to the wall by the volume, but to paraphrase a line Bob himself would sing many years later: things were about to get interesting right about now.  At the close of “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat”, the final new song of the set, the natives began to get decidedly restless. Heckling, booing, shouting and general unrest broke out in earnest, while a few Dylan supporters yelled at the dissenters to keep quiet. “That’s crap” wailed someone, while another told Bob “Just play”.  Dylan dealt with this in familiar fashion. He mumbled incoherently into the microphone until the rabble quietened down, mainly because they were trying to work out what he was saying. He ended this otherwise unintelligible speech with “When I was just a baby” then, as the band kicked into “One Too Many Mornings”, he repeated “Remember, I was a baby once” only louder this time. 

Anyone familiar with the Dylan documentary No Direction Home (and the earlier unreleased film Eat the Document) will have seen the disgruntled fans interviewed in the foyer of a north of England venue (possibly Sheffield).  “I’ve heard pop groups produce better rubbish than that!” opined one red-faced farm boy with vowels flatter than roadkill hedgehog.  “It were a bloody disgrace. He wants shooting! He’s a traitor!” he continued with perhaps a touch of hyperbole.

We’d read about the booing, of course.  Sheffield was the seventh date on the UK itinerary and news of unrest from the fans had already started to filter through.  Let’s be honest though, it was basically just a copycat protest. After all, what were they expecting? Blonde On Blonde may have been a few weeks away, but Dylan had already released a couple of full-fat electric albums in the shape of Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited.  If that weren’t enough, the trio of loud and nasty singles “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Positively 4th Street” and “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” had been all over the radio and the pop charts for almost a year, so the blueprint for Bob’s new direction was right there for all to see.

They’d no doubt read that the folkies were protesting in America and felt compelled to follow suit.  But who in Britain, other than perhaps stuffy old Ewan MacColl and his traditionalist ilk, really cared about that stuff?  Did we boo? Of course we fucking didn’t. The short-haired squares could complain all they liked, this was Bob Dylan at his absolute creative peak, and (with apologies to Bruce) we had just seen the real future of rock and roll.

“One Too Many Mornings” was then a two-year-old song from The Times They Are A-Changin’ album, but Dylan was evolving at such a rate that those two years might well have been a decade.  That was then and this was now, and the rollicking 1966 version was unrecognisable from the gentle acoustic ballad of 1964.  More yelling and dissent followed as Dylan took his seat at the piano for “Ballad Of A Thin Man”. Someone in the band said, “Can you hear ‘em?” before Bob enquired, with heavy sarcasm, “No boos?”  Seemingly spurred on by events, Dylan delivered an incandescent performance as good as any of the other six (count ‘em) official live versions that have appeared over the years (not counting those on the multi disc 1966 box set, of course). 

Onstage in 1966

Mickey Jones’ pistol shot snare kicked off “Like A Rolling Stone” and we were into the home stretch.  Only a year after the best rock single of all time (© all music magazines, forever) put the cat among the folk purists’ pigeons, Bob was already experimenting with the phrasing and scansion, stretching a line here, shortening another there and generally messing with the structure of the song.  Robbie Robertson was also on top form, his snaking guitar lines inventive and ground-breaking throughout the show, but nowhere more so than on this closing song.

Then, suddenly, it was all over and, as the stunned crowd began to shuffle out into Barker's Pool wondering what the hell they had just witnessed, the spell was broken by a single incongruous verse of “God Save The Queen”, then obligatory in all British theatres and cinemas, played over the theatre Tannoy system.

Walking through the city afterwards we were on a real high.  We had shaken Magic Michael off along the way and on the platform of Sheffield Midland station someone (John Tams, probably) produced a harmonica.  There we sat singing Dylan songs, wishing the night would never end.

A day later in Manchester, Dylan would be denounced as “Judas” and soon the entire world would sit up and take notice.  But that was yet to happen and for just a few hours more he belonged to us.

It’s been said that the Sheffield show was one of the best of 1966, both in terms of Bob’s performance and the recording quality.  This was borne out on the monumental 36 CD box set The 1966 Live Recordings, featuring every known recording from the tour.

Concert programme for the 1966 tour

Set List

She Belongs To Me

Fourth Time Around

Visions Of Johanna

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

Desolation Row

Just Like A Woman

Mr. Tambourine Man

Interval

Tell Me, Momma

I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)

Baby, Let Me Follow You Down

Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues

Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat

One Too Many Mornings

Ballad Of A Thin Man

Like A Rolling Stone

The Gaumont Cinema pictured in 1959

Footnote: The Sheffield Gaumont cinema. It’s gone now, of course, demolished and replaced by a nightclub and department store. The theatre first opened as the Regent on 26th December 1927, seating 2,300. It was re-named the Gaumont on 27th July 1946. Throughout the 50s and 60s the stage was used for one-night concerts by artists such as Bob Dylan, Cliff Richard, Eddie Cochran, Bobby Darin, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Tom Jones and the Count Basie Orchestra. The last artist to appear there was Victor Borge in 1968.  It became a multiplex in July 1969, which spelled the end of its days as a rock venue and the Gaumont finally closed as a cinema in November 1985, showing Perfect, Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan and A View to a Kill.

1965 postcard showing the Sheffield City Hall (left) and the Gaumont Cinema (right) Dylan played both these venues within a year

She Said She’d Always Been a Dancer: Soho in the 60s

by
Stuart Penney

In early 1967 I arrived in London with little more than a guitar and a change of clothes.  The summer of love was just around the corner and, to paraphrase Bob Dylan from almost a decade hence, there was music in the cafes at night and cultural revolution in the air.  

Jobs were plentiful and, if you weren’t too fussy, cheap accommodation was easily found, usually without the need for tiresome references or expensive bonds.  Thanks to the Evening Standard classified ads, I quickly landed a tiny bedsit in Notting Hill, followed by a job as a general dogsbody in the post room of W. Paxton & Co, a long-established music publisher at 30 Old Compton Street in the heart of Soho.  Even for 1967 the pay was pitiful, just £8 a week (which translates to £150 at the time of writing) but, more importantly, it was a foot in the door of the music industry, albeit at the humblest level.  Trudging around the West End every day collecting sheet music orders from the myriad publishing houses also provided an invaluable knowledge of the back streets and alleyways of central London.

Restaurants, strip clubs, exotic delicatessens, folk cellars, recording studios, guitar shops and trendy clothes boutiques were everywhere in the surrounding streets and Soho was vibrant with colour and noise.  Across the road from Paxton's was the 2i’s coffee bar. Established in 1956, it was purportedly the first rock & roll club in Europe and the place where Cliff Richard and the Shadows (née Drifters), Adam Faith, Joe Brown, Tommy Steele and many other British rockers got their start.  The name 2i's was derived from the original owners, Freddie and Sammy Irani, although the brothers were long gone by the time rock & roll arrived.

A few yards along at number 63 Old Compton Street were the former premises of the Beatles’ tailor Dougie Millings.  This is where the Fab Four’s famous collarless suits were made in 1963. The Flamingo and Marquee clubs were just a stone’s throw away in nearby Wardour Street and a few minutes in the other direction was Ronnie Scott’s jazz club.  Ronnie’s had recently moved to Frith Street, but his original Gerrard Street premises, renamed the Old Place, remained open until the end of 1967.

The 2i's Coffee Bar in Old Compton Street

Upstairs from Paxton's were several floors of offices rented by all manner of showbiz types - publicists, managers, pluggers, agents and the like.  Among them was Bill Cotton Junior, the television executive and son of the famous big band leader. He later became BBC Head of Light Entertainment and Controller of BBC1. Another office was occupied by Len Black who ran Mediant Music. Black acted as personal manager to a range of artists, including the famous Irish songwriter and folk singer Dominic Behan. He was also briefly married to actress Wendy Richard, later famous for her TV roles in Are You Being Served? and EastEnders.

Immediately next door was the Prince Edward Theatre.  Opened in 1930, the theatre went through several name changes until, as the London Casino, it became a wide-screen Cinerama picture house in 1954.  In the late 70s the venue reverted to its original name and became a full-time theatre once again, presenting big budget musical productions such as Evita, Miss Saigon and Jersey Boys.  One day in mid-1967 a skip arrived in the street outside and what appeared to be the entire costume wardrobe of the theatre was unceremoniously dumped.  Countless silk dresses, velvet tunics, fancy suede boots and wide-brimmed hats were simply tossed away. A couple of us managed to climb in and rescue some items before they went to the tip, but I shudder to think what the entire collection would be worth today.  It was a universe away from the provincial drudgery of my Sheffield hometown.

W. Paxton's Dean Street head office was strictly old school, publishing classical and brass band music of increasingly limited interest in the swinging 60s. The company started out in New Oxford Street in 1870 and there was even a Paxton record label (established 1949) which sounds impressive but was virtually moribund by the time I arrived. 

Thankfully, the Old Compton Street branch was somewhat hipper, supplying stores across Britain and Europe with the latest pop sheet music and songbooks sourced from the various London-based publishing houses, of which there were dozens in and around Denmark Street at that time.  

Sheet music had been king in the first half of the 20th century but by the 60s it was losing ground to record sales and the traditional publishers were fast becoming an anachronism.  In the 70s and 80s closures, amalgamations and takeovers became commonplace and the music publishing industry shrank to a shadow of its former self. 

It transpired that my job at Paxton’s had been recently vacated by a guitar player named Caleb Quaye, who had gone to work as an engineer at Dick James’ studio in nearby New Oxford Street, where he would hook up with Elton John, then known as Reg Dwight.  Reg and Caleb had met at Paxton’s and would sometimes sit in the downstairs tearoom planning their musical future.

Reg had previously worked at another publisher, Mills Music in Denmark Street, known as London’s Tin Pan Alley, just a two-minute walk from Old Compton Street.  Caleb would later record extensively with Elton and with his own band Hookfoot.

Part of an Elton John interview in Zig Zag magazine, October 1972

With a small retail counter at street level and a maze of corridors leading to Dickensian wood-panelled offices and subterranean storage rooms behind, Paxton’s was an odd place indeed, employing a motley assortment of misfits, oddballs and eccentrics.  Some senior staff members had worked there for decades, and nearly all had unusual personality traits. Like something from the lyrics of the 1966 Cat Stevens hit "Matthew & Son", a few of the more venerable managers were even rumoured to have been at the company for 50 years, taking them back to the First World War! At that time Paxtons was located at 95 New Oxford Street.

There was Ron Park an angry little man who commuted by train every morning from Luton.  With Coke bottle specs and a toothpick-thin roll-up permanently clamped between his bloodless lips, Ron was in a perpetual state of red-faced indignation and would moan endlessly about the world in general and the deficiencies of British Rail in particular to anyone within earshot.  

More interesting was Harry Shaberman, who wrote or co-wrote several published songs, notably the 1952 Max Bygraves novelty hit “You’re a Pink Toothbrush” (where he used the name Harry Irving). This was a staple of the BBC radio request show Children’s Favourites for decades (look it up on YouTube). Despite this modest level of fame, mild-mannered Harry wore a brown warehouse coat and worked in the gloomy basement beneath a bare light bulb filling orders of vocal scores for stage and film musicals. The scores were individually wrapped in brown paper tied up with hemp string. Some hadn’t been disturbed for years and were covered in a healthy layer of dust which he would remove with his sleeve before carefully opening them.

Strangest and best of all was messenger boy Nigel Cornthwaite. His all-consuming twin passions were theatre organs and the Who. Despite resembling an overweight bank clerk in his tweed jacket complete with leather elbow patches and tie, he would regularly perform an impromptu version of “My Generation” for us in the tearoom. 

Using a piece of wood as a makeshift guitar and placing heavy emphasis on Roger Daltrey’s stuttering delivery (particularly the line “why don’t you all f-f-f-f-fade away” which he seemed to find particularly risqué) Nigel would roll around on the floor and then smash his “guitar”, Townshend style.  And, heartless bastards that we were, we would encourage him endlessly, until one of the managers heard the racket and came down to curtail the performance. 

When agitated (which seemed to be most of the time) Nigel would suck his thumb and regress to infanthood.  He lived at home with his mother in Twickenham and it seemed that Pete Townshend knew all about him, inviting Nigel onstage at Who concerts and even to his home on occasion.  Several Who reference books mention Nigel joining the band on stage for “Magic Bus” during their last-ever appearance at the Marquee in December 1968. I suppose these days he would be taken care of properly, but back then Nigel was thrown into the workplace at the deep end and left to sink or swim.  It was all very sad. Years later Caleb Quaye told me “What a character Nigel was.  I actually went with him to see the Who at the Marquee.  I don't think he ever recovered!”

In 1967 Soho exuded an air of seedy, down-at-heel decadence with garishly lit strip clubs and walk-up brothels on every street and alleyway.  The doorbells euphemistically labelled “Attractive Model, 3rd Floor” were a clumsy way of circumnavigating the law against soliciting.  The number of Soho sex shops increased from just a handful in the early sixties to close on a hundred by the early seventies.  The Street Offences Act of 1959 had supposedly driven prostitution underground, but it was still visible well into the 60s with working girls appearing in shop doorways as soon as dusk fell.  A few plied their trade from the side exits of the Prince Edward Theatre on Greek Street and after a while I got to know some of the regulars by name. One would tease me mercilessly about my proto Marc Bolan haircut.  “If I had hair like you, darling, I’d be making a lot more money!” she would call out as I hurried past on my messenger boy duties.

Each strip club had a barker standing outside on the pavement whose job it was to cajole the drunks and unsuspecting saps inside where they would be fleeced for bogus membership fees and charged extortionate amounts for drinks.  The girls who worked the strip joints used a well-tried rotation system and every day you’d see them rushing from club to club, make-up in place, peroxide hair in rollers under a head scarf and wearing, more often than not, a PVC leopard skin print or cheap fur coat of some description to perform their act yet again a few yards down the road.  This is surely what inspired Paul McCartney to come up with the line “She said she’d always been a dancer, she worked in 15 clubs a day” when he penned the Abbey Road song “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window.”

Don Partridge busking in Brewer Street, Soho

Along with the tourists, office workers and local characters, Soho was home to several street entertainers.  Don Partridge, the self-styled King of The Buskers was a one-man band who scored a couple of UK top ten hits in 1968, the most memorable of which was “Rosie”.  Don was an imposing figure who could regularly be seen performing around the area with his guitar, harmonica and kazoo in a Dylan-style neck harness and a bass drum strapped to his back, not to mention his trademark snakeskin jacket.  He was frequently moved on by the police and sometimes even arrested and charged with obstruction, but he’d always be back the next day to perform his Jesse Fuller repertoire (Fuller’s “San Francisco Bay Blues” was an essential part of every busker’s repertoire).  Following his brief flirtation with pop success Don continued to travel the world as a street singer almost up to his death in 2010.

One of the most memorable Soho characters was Billy Davis, an alcoholic semi-vagrant who had a distinctive line in street performance. He wore thick horn rim glasses and would stick a carnation behind each ear, along with two more in the buttonholes of his threadbare army surplus overcoat. The flowers were sourced from nearby Covent Garden market each morning, earning him the nickname “Rosie.” 

Billy’s arrival was typically heralded with plenty of shouting and swearing, so we’d invariably hear him long before he came into view.  His party piece involved standing in the middle of the street and, casually indifferent to the traffic chaos building up around him, he would carefully balance a wine bottle on his head while singing ancient music hall songs at the top of his lungs. He’d presumably consumed the entire contents of the bottle beforehand.  The spectacle was usually accompanied by the impatient tooting of car horns and the cursing of taxi drivers. Billy’s performance was repeated almost daily around Soho, and he would gather crowds of bemused onlookers. Inevitably, he eventually crossed paths with the Beatles. 

Billy Davis pictured in Gerrard Street circa 1968

Working in Soho we’d see famous actors and musicians on the street daily and while it was always a thrill for a lad from the provinces, after a while it became commonplace and a matter of routine.  “Just seen Sean Connery in the sandwich shop on Wardour Street” someone would say, prompting a co-worker to counter with a bored “Really? the Small Faces were in the Gioconda cafe on Denmark Street this morning” and so the game of celebrity Top Trumps would continue.  But I don’t care how blasé or world-weary you are, seeing the Beatles in the flesh is something else entirely. A few yards along from Paxton’s at 76 Old Compton Street, on the second floor above a shop, was Norman’s Film Productions. It was here that the Fab Four came almost every day for eleven weeks in late 1967 to edit their Magical Mystery Tour television movie.

The Beatles and Billy at Norman's Film Productions, late 1967

Word started going around that Paul McCartney had been spotted coming and going at Norman’s and, sure enough, a few days later I saw a green Aston Martin DB6 (registration number LLO 840D) coming down Dean Street with Paul at the wheel (the official factory colour of the car was Goodwood Green, although it appears in dark blue livery on some internet photos today). Then, returning from lunch one day, I encountered all four Beatles walking together along Old Compton Street.

Billy Davis appeared in the "Hey Jude" promotional film clip, September 1968

They were dressed in their colourful psychedelic finery with neck scarves and beads and George had on a bright yellow Afghan coat.  Chatting and wisecracking among themselves, they were clearly in high spirits. My memory tells me they were walking in single file, like on the Abbey Road sleeve, but that’s probably not true.  As they passed a cafe named The Yodelling Sausage (yes, really) on the corner of Greek Street and Old Compton Street, Lennon became quite animated, laughing and repeating the name in that unmistakable nasal accent.  As for me, I became frozen to the spot. The hysteria of Beatlemania had long since passed and this was Soho, after all, where well-known people were an everyday sight, but here were all four members of the most famous group in the world, casually walking unmolested (and mostly unnoticed) among the shop workers and tourists. It was a truly heart-stopping moment. Then they were gone towards Charing Cross Road and it was back to the workaday drudgery, eccentrics and misfits at Paxton’s.

Billy Davis at Norman's Film Productions, late 1967

In November 1967 Norrie Drummond from the New Musical Express interviewed Paul McCartney at Norman’s Film Productions.  The Beatles had encountered Billy by this point and invited him up to the editing suite for a singalong.  Drummond wrote in the NME “As we walked back through Soho, Paul suddenly spotted Billy, an old friend of the boys.  Billy is about sixty and wanders around Soho with a bottle on his head and a carnation behind each ear.  ‘We'd have loved him for the film,’ whispered Paul as he, John, Ringo and Billy broke into a chorus of [Guy Mitchell’s 1956 hit] “Singing The Blues”.  ‘Long live the Beatles!’ shouted Billy as they continued down the street, ‘And the Stones!’” The Beatles took such a shine to Billy that a year later they invited him to Twickenham for the filming of the “Hey Jude” promo clip.  Look out for him standing next to Ringo’s drum kit during the fade out.

A few weeks later we were sitting in the tearoom at Paxton’s when someone came in brandishing the newly released double EP of Magical Mystery Tour.  We pored over it, as people did with every new Beatles’ record back then.  Most vowed to get a copy when funds allowed (the retail price was 19s/6d, or 97½p), but one young square piped up with “I’d like to buy it for my young niece, but I don’t think it’s appropriate because of the lyrics”.  He was referring to the “I Am The Walrus” line “boy you been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down”. Now, even in 1967 that was a weird thing to say.

The Harry Nilsson Songbook

In 1971 Paxton’s publishing catalogue was sold to rival publisher Novello. The rest of the company including the wholesale distribution arm was acquired by the giant American publisher Charles Hansen Music Corp. and the company was re-located to Moorgate in London’s financial district. 

Compared to Soho it was a very dull place to work indeed, totally lacking the colour and character of the West End.  Nevertheless, I had moved up the company food chain by early 1972 and one of the first tasks I was given at Moorgate was overseeing the production of a songbook by Harry Nilsson.  Then based in London, Harry was currently riding high with his biggest album Nilsson Schmilsson and the attendant smash hit single “Without You”, so it was decided to rush a songbook onto the market. 

Together with the head designer I was dispatched to Harry’s fourth floor apartment #12, 9 Curzon Place in Mayfair*, close to both the US Embassy and the Playboy Club, to show him proof sheets of the photographs we intended to use for the book.  Although it was well past noon when we arrived, Harry answered the door looking like a man with the world’s worst hangover and I was gratified to note that he was wearing the very same orange dressing gown as on the cover of Nilsson Schmilsson. 

While Harry scrutinised the proof sheets, we drank tea made by his stunning lady friend (who may have been the second Mrs. Nilsson, Diane Clatworthy).  Meanwhile, I couldn’t resist leafing through his small but perfectly formed record collection. Together with the inevitable Beatles’ albums the LPs were predominantly singer/songwriter themed, with the first two Paul McCartney solo titles, Randy Newman’s 12 Songs and the newly released self-titled solo record by Paul Simon all present and correct.  The flat was tastefully decorated in chic early 70s style by, as I later discovered, ROR (Ringo or Robin), a design company jointly owned by Ringo Starr and Robin Cruikshank, with offices in the Beatles' Savile Row Apple building.  As we left, Harry came to the door to see us off, still in that dressing gown and already on what may have been his second double Brandy Alexander of the day.

Harry Nilsson's Mayfair apartment was in this building

In July 1974 Mama Cass Elliot succumbed to a fatal heart attack in the apartment and four years later Keith Moon died of a drug overdose in the same bed.  Both were aged just 32. The British tabloid press were quick to dub the Mayfair flat “cursed” and “London's most morbid pop location”.  Nilsson later returned to the US and sold the Curzon Place property to Pete Townshend.

*Following some 80s redevelopment in the area, 9 Curzon Place became 1 Curzon Square.

In July 1972 the US owners decided to close W. Paxton down and the entire stock, comprising untold thousands of rare and historic music song sheets, dating from the sixties back to the Edwardian era, was shipped to America.  Poor Nigel was sacked on a trumped-up misconduct charge, presumably to avoid giving him a sizable redundancy payoff (he had been at the company since leaving school in the early 60s), while the rest of us were quietly laid off. Charles Hansen Music Corp itself ceased trading in 1991 and the bulk of their catalogue was taken over by Warner Music.

During the 70s and 80s a branch of the Hong Kong-based Overseas Trust Bank moved into Paxton’s old premises at 30 Old Compton Street. In the 90s the area became the epicentre of London's LGBT community and today the building houses the world-famous G-A-Y Nightclub.

Footnote: the G-A-Y nightclub closed in October 2025.

 

The G-A-Y Nightclub at 30 Old Compton Street