Memories, Dreams and Reflections. Marianne Faithfull

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СКАЧАТЬ He seemed happy, and put up such a front you could never guess what was going on in the dark corners.

      We talked and talked, about ballet, opera, the theatre. We talked about Margot Fonteyn and Nureyev, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith’s production of Miss Julie. At that time Brian was agonising over Up Against It, the Joe Orton script that he wanted the Beatles to do. He was worried it was too far out.

      ‘I don’t know,’ he said, flipping through the script. ‘Some of it is extremely provocative and nasty.’

      ‘C’mon, Brian,’ I said. ‘It’s Joe Orton; they’ll eat it up.’

      ‘Well, the Archbishop of Canterbury turns out to be a woman, the boys get dressed up as women, commit adultery and murder, and are involved in the assassination of the Prime Minister. Do you really think audiences can stomach this stuff?’

      ‘It’s farce, Brian,’ I told him. ‘And, let’s face it, at this point the Beatles could do with something edgy.’

      I hadn’t, of course, actually read it, and when I did, I saw how tricky – unfortunately – it would be for the Beatles (with the exception of John). There were wonderful outrageous lines. The Archbishop of Canterbury was pure hysterical camp: ‘I’m Princess of the Church. Let me pass. I’ve some hard praying to do.’ The Stones maybe could have got away with it, but for the Fab Four it would’ve been a bit of a stretch.

      Orton rightly anticipated that it would be turned down. In his diary he wrote scathingly of Epstein: ‘An amateur and a fool. He isn’t equipped to judge the quality of a script. Probably he will never say “yes”, equally hasn’t the courage to say “no”. A thoroughly weak, flaccid type.’

      Too bad. I think if the Beatles had done Orton’s script, it would have really helped Brian – moved him up a level. Although Joe Orton made an unfortunate choice in a lover (who killed him), his take on the Beatles was spot on. He had the right cheeky attitude to the whole thing, and he came from the same milieu as the Beatles. It would have been brilliant if they’d filmed Orton’s script. Would have helped Brian exorcise some of his shit, too.

      I know Brian Epstein really liked me because towards the end of one of these teas he asked me to marry him; not that he was exactly serious, but for a second I actually considered it. Come to think of it, I know exactly what stopped me. It was our Mick walking in and saying, ‘Come on, darling, we’ve got to go home now.’

      Kit Lambert, who along with Chris Stamp managed The Who, was a wonderful maniac. I remember in the early seventies visiting Kit in some really dreadful, scabby flat in Notting Hill, before Notting Hill became fashionable. It was a trip, I can tell you, both of us doing lots of heroin and coke and alcohol – Kit loved alcohol. We had a whale of a time as Kit regaled me with stories about his dad Constant Lambert, the composer, acting out scenes from operas, scenes with divas and soirées with princesses and rent boys. I didn’t know Kit in his heyday; I only got to know him on the way down, which was more interesting I think, because in an odd way that’s when he was truly in his glory – he was a connoisseur of the lower depths, an area in which I am also somewhat of an expert. The only good thing you could say about Kit’s self-demolition was that he had a perverse kind of pleasure in all of it. He was such a fascinating pervert with a classical education. He used to say things like, ‘The destruction of Pompeii … one of the most magnificent events in history. Those two naked boys preserved in flagrante delicto for all eternity!’

      Kit liked building things up, like a child with a sand castle, and then, oh, the mad joy of tearing them down. He enjoyed seeing everything in turmoil, going up in flames. Like Nero, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and Pliny the Elder, he loved a great catastrophe – especially if he’d engineered it himself. He loved talking about his disasters – few understood that he relished them as perverse works of art.

      I remember once he wanted to take me on a lig to the Cannes Film Festival on a yacht with lots of drugs. In spite of his fallen state he was always very posh. But I wasn’t in any condition to go to some fancy international event and display myself in my wretched condition, so regretfully I declined. Thank God. I would have made the most awful fool of myself, and in public. I had been doing that far too much in front of people as it was – along the lines of the famous Mandrax head-in-the-soup incident. Kit went and made a fool of himself in the grand manner, but then he was a man for whom flamboyant bad behaviour was a fine art. One of the curious things about Kit, of course, was that his father had been a great composer; and that leads us directly to Tommy, The Who’s rock opera. You can see why Pete with his transcendent – and overweening – approach to rock would have been so receptive to Kit’s idea, and I do think it was Kit’s idea – writing a rock opera. After Sgt Pepper everybody wanted a crack at the rock Gesamtkunstwerk, but it was not on. The only person who managed anything like it, and, in fact, preceded it, was Brian Wilson with Pet Sounds. And it was Pet Sounds that helped give Sgt Pepper wings.

      Kit came to a sad end, alas. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling down the stairs of his mother’s house in 1981.

      Visits to Paul and Jane Asher weren’t quite as relaxed as those Mick and I spent with George and Pattie. With hindsight I can see that they were rather uptight. There were constant little frictions. Mick and I were very close and we would never have done anything like fret about windows being open or closed, or anything as petty as that, but this is what happens when couples start to come apart. In any case I was in a very different position to the one Jane found herself in. I’d done what Paul wanted Jane to do, and given up my career. I wasn’t going on tour with the Old Vic; I wasn’t taking any more movie roles and very few parts in plays. I gave up everything I’d been doing, apart from a little bit of theatre. Jane was a serious actress and wanted to continue her career, but Paul had other ideas. That’s why Linda was so perfect for Paul; she was just what he wanted, an old-fashioned Liverpool wife who was completely devoted to her husband. In a way, that’s what Mick wanted, too, and for a while I acquiesced, but in the end it kicked back very badly. On the other hand, Paul isn’t exactly the regular bloke he appears. For one thing, he was always intellectually curious. Not only was he into electronic music and Stockhausen and all of that, but he was into Magritte, pop art, the Expressionists and even avant-garde theatre. I believe it was Paul who first thought of Joe Orton as the screenwriter for the next Beatles movie. He’d been to see Loot, Orton’s outrageous phallic farce, and liked it. He encouraged Brian Epstein to arrange a meeting with Orton, and in Orton’s diary he describes getting on famously with Paul.

      Arrived in Belgravia at ten minutes to eight … I found Chapel Street easily. I didn’t want to get there too early so I walked around for a while and came back through a nearby mews. When I got back to the house it was nearly eight o’clock. I rang the bell and an old man entered. He seemed surprised to see me. ‘Is this Brian Epstein’s house?’ I said. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and led the way to the hall. I suddenly realised that the man was the butler. I’ve never seen one before … He took me into a room and said in a loud voice, ‘Mr Orton.’ Everybody looked up and stood to their feet. I was introduced to one or two people. And Paul McCartney. He was just as the photographs. Only he’d grown a moustache. His hair was shorter too. He was playing the latest Beatles record, ‘Penny Lane’. I like it very much. Then he played the other side – Strawberry something. I didn’t like this as much. We talked intermittently. Before we went out to dinner we agreed to throw out the idea of setting the film in the thirties. We went down to dinner. The trusted old retainer – looking too much like a butler to be good casting – busied himself in the corner. ‘The only thing I get from the theatre,’ Paul M. said, ‘is a sore arse.’ He said Loot was the only play he hadn’t wanted to leave before the end. ‘I’d’ve liked a bit more,’ he said. We talked of the theatre. I said that compared with the pop-scene the theatre was square. ‘The theatre started СКАЧАТЬ