Miles

I haven’t written anything in my blog since Rosemary died in June 2019 so there is a lot to catch up on. Here is the last photograph I took of her. We are waiting for a cab outside Tate Britain after seeing the last day of the Anni Albers show. Rosemary loved her ‘pictorial weavings’ and, looking back after having seen the Sophie Taeuber-Arp show, I now find them more enjoyable. 

This is probably the last picture taken of Rosemary. She was at a reunion lunch for Engineering Today staff held at Zedel, in Soho on February 5^th. This was the magazine that she was writing for when I first met her back in 1978. Her editor, Simon Caulkin, remains a close friend. From left to right: Rosemary, Mike Orme, Philip Beresford. 

Theo, my son, and I, were helped enormously by our friends after Rosemary died; I don’t know what we would have done without their love and support. Here is a typical evening in March 2019 with Theo discussing film with Ginette Vincendeau, professor of film at Kings, London. They stuck to English though Ginette is French and Theo was educated there.

On 23^rd March 2019 there was an anti-Brexit march through London, ending at Parliament Square. I went with Andrew Wilson, then still at the Tate, and Ingrid Swenson, from the Peer Gallery in Hoxton. Some of the right wing press claimed that the demo was violent; on the contrary, it was a very polite demonstration, possibly too polite. Someone compared it to a long queue at their local Waitrose.

In May, Catherine Marcangeli put on an exhibition of the work of Adrian Henri at the Whitechapel Gallery. This was supported by a number of musical events organised by Thurston Moore and also a very nice lunch in the gallery attended by, among others, Brian Eno and Ann Waldman. Ann later gave a reading. Here I am with Brian and Ann after we had been fed. 

While Catherine was in town (she is a prof of fine art at the Sorbonne) we visited the Lee Krasner show at the Barbican. Much of the work was derivative but when she did her own thing the results were wonderful, as in this example. 

In early August we held a celebration for Rosemary in Martha Stevns’s beautiful garden in Mosset, in the Pyrenees Oriental. Rosemary always loved it there and it was a chance for all of Rosemary’s French friends, and friends who lived in France, to get together to remember her. Some people came from some distance, such as Ken Weaver and Maxine, who stayed with friend. I first met Ken when he was the drummer with The Fugs, in New York in 1967, so we go back a bit. This is him in a restaurant in Eus, a nearby village. The celebration went on until late, with our friend Zig playing trombone and people drinking. The Mayor of Mosset fell over on the way home and had to take a few days off work so it was a good party.

A few days later, on August 6^th, a small group of us, some of Rosemary’s family and a few close friends, walked half an hour into the woods to a small pool, fed by a waterfall, the cascade Salt Gros, where Rosemary sometimes swam. It was here Theo scattered Rosemary’s ashes into La Castellane. It was a place that she loved and a perfect place for her to complete her journey through life.

It was the season of the summer fetes. Catllar is known locally as ‘the dancing village’ and in the central square, just around the corner from our house, the local residents celebrated with line-dancing, as they do every year. There is nothing they like better than for the whole village to get up and dance the ‘Macarena’. Later the atmosphere turns more sombre and they form rings to dance the Sardana, the mysterious 600 year old national dance of the Catalans, with old people teaching the young it’s intricate steps. It is not for tourists, it is part of their village culture and enormously popular.

On October 1^st, the European Beat Studies Network held an event at the old Beat Hotel on the rue Git le Coeur. There were drinks at the hotel, presided over by the owner, Madame Odillard and her son followed by a proper Parisian banquet at a nearby bistro. It was great to meet some of the Beat Generation scholars whose work I had read, but who I never met. Oliver Harris presided over the affair with care and attention. Here is the line-up, followed by myself with Frank Rynne, and a snap from the banquet of Pauline and Catherine.  

October 19^th, 2019 saw yet another protest against Brexit. 60% of Londoners voted Remain with all of the central London boroughs voting between 69% and 79% to stay in the EU: 2 ¼ million Londoners voted remain and 1 ½ million to leave, a 60/40 split. Once again I was on the march with Andrew and Ingrid.

Also in October there was a planning lunch with Luzius Martin, Udo Breger and Ton Neurath to discuss Soft Need 23, in fact the fourth and final issue of the magazine which Udo started back in 1973. It was great to see Tom again. A few years back we flew to Germany to give a talk on, of all things, Swinging London at the ZKM arts complex in Karlsruhe. We did it in English and had a full house. Tom is one of the few remaining residents of the original Beat Hotel (and also the owner of Thames & Hudson publishers). The discussions with Udo continued over a few bottles of wine. 

Rather unexpectedly, the University of Gloucestershire, which has in some unspeakable way absorbed my old art college, awarded me with an Honorary Doctorate of Letters, which was very nice of them. I rather liked the idea of being a doctor, though I would never use it in case I was called in when someone collapsed on a plane or in a restaurant. Theo and I went down to Cheltenham and put up at the Queens Hotel, the fanciest gaff in town when I was at art college there and totally out of any art student’s league but now cheap by London standards. I got to wear some faux-medieval costume and was presented with my scroll after all the actual graduates had received theirs. As there were about a thousand people there, all desperate to get out and have a drink, I did not give a speech. Just thanked them very much and had my picture taken. The event was held at Cheltenham Race Track, home of the Gold Cup steeplechase. Cheltenham is known for only two things: spies and horses. The graduation ceremony seemed heavy on horses; everyone we talked to ran a stable or trained jockeys or some such. The 5000+ people who work at GCHQ don’t advertise the fact in the way they used to. When I was an art student in the early sixties they often wore their laminate IDs on a ribbon round their neck and were an easy target for free drinks in the town centre pubs. They were from all over, many of them American, of course, and all the ones I ever met were very well read and multi-lingual. Perhaps all the equestrian talk of paddocks was just a cover.

While we were there I took Theo, my son, to see where I spent much of my childhood. A small house at 92 Alstone Lane, near the railway track, which, in those days, had an outside lavatory like all the other houses in the row. It was neater when my Aunt Olly lived there and was then in the middle of a market garden. Now suburbs stretch away to the west. I also showed him the famous paedophile statue – as it used to be known – at the top end of the Promenade of the King, guiding a little girl’s hand to his flies, or so it seems from some angles. 

I finished the year at Marianne Faithfull’s birthday on December 29^th. Bella Freud and Harriet Vyner organised a dinner at Bibendum – Marianne’s choice – which was of course delightful and the waiters brought her a cake with a birthday candle. Of the six of us, I was the only one drinking. 

It was lovely to see her; we had known each other since she was 18 years old. We could not even begin to catch up as it had been years since I last saw her. I hadn’t even known she’d moved back to London from Paris.

It is with great sadness that I report the death of my dear wife, Rosemary Bailey.

On February 21^st 2019 she was admitted to the intensive care unit of University College London Hospital suffering with a bad case of flu. She had had CLL – chronic lymphocytic leukaemia for some years and was about to have a second chemotherapy course as her white blood count has risen again. She was previously treated successfully more than two years ago. The CLL meant that that her immune system was compromised, so the flu hit her very hard. Because she was incapable to getting enough oxygen through a face mask, they immediately put her into a hospital-induced coma and attached her to a ventilator to do the breathing for her. She never regained consciousness.

In the following three weeks the doctors and consultants tried a number of ways to improve her lungs but her white blood count doubled in two weeks and she was incredibly weak. Even turning her in bed caused her to get very upset. Rosemary had prepared a Living Will, asking not to be resuscitated in the event of terminal illness from which no possible recovery was possible. . In many ways we were disobeying her wishes by continuing so long with no real change in her condition. But then, after a discussion with her consultant, Dr. David Brealey and in the opinion of her three other consultants, we decided to let nature take its course. We did not want her to experience any pain, fear or confusion. Rosemary died at 5:00am GMT on Wednesday, 20 March, 2019.

The funeral was held at the West London Crematorium on April 2 at 3:45, attended by her two sisters, her brother, her niece and nephew, her brother-in-law, her son Theo, and her husband, Barry Miles. There were also a small number of close friends but the decision had been made to keep it private and to hold a public celebration later in the year, probably July.

Barry Miles (her husband).

On the 70^th anniversary of the Nakba, nothing has changed.

Israeli snipers murdered 60 unarmed Palestinian protesters including 16 children and injured 2,700 others. Further proof that the existence of Israel is the biggest obscenity on the face of the earth.

Allen Ginsberg’s solution was to move the United Nations there and make the Holy Land international territory. I totally agree with him.

Meanwhile I recommend the following essay, from Literary Hub:

Literary Hub

There are so many things I intended to comment upon, but didn’t have the time. One was the sale of doors from the Hotel Chelsea, rescued from a skip on April 12th. I admire the acumen of the homeless man, Jim Georgiou, once a Chelsea resident, in rescuing them back in 2012 and putting up for auction. As to their veracity, looking at pictures of them, It looks as if many of them were inner doors, rather than front doors. Those with numbers, right at the top, were identified easily enough, but much of the accompanying literature was ambitious to say the least. Jack Kerouac, for instance, did not write On The Road at the Chelsea. As far as I know, he only ever spent one night there: a one-night-stand with Gore Vidal that both he and Vidal wrote about. The door advertised as Andy Warhol’s room was Edie Sedgwick’s room, number 105. Warhol never lived there, although he did film Chelsea Girls at the Chelsea but only Rene Ricard was living there at the time. Anyway, good luck to Jim Georgiou who was evicted for not paying his rent, the sale made over $400,000 of which he is donating half to a homeless charity.

In the late sixties I rented a house on Lord North Street, Westminster, close to the Houses of Parliament. We had a black cat, called Nadja after the heroine in Andre Breton’s novel of the same name. She had an unfortunate habit of curling up and sleeping on your chest – the heating in the house in winter was virtually non-existent – and once you had gone to sleep, she would edge her way up until she was curled up on your face (usually resulting in her being thrown out of the bedroom and the door closed). One of our neighbours, just around the corner in Smith Square, was William Rees-Mogg, the editor of The Times. We shared a garden wall and he once sent me a note asking me to stop my cat from digging up his pansies. On fine days we could sometimes hear his baby crying or gurgling in its pram in the garden. This was, of course, Jacob Rees-Mogg, but it seems that Nadja did not find him warm enough to do her face sitting act. Sad really.

The exhibition of the British Underground Press of the Sixties was a great success. Far more people attended than we were expecting, a great many of whom were insistent upon telling us how they still had piles if IT or Oz in their attic or cupboard or under the bed. Carla, Stephanie, Vanessa and Rose did a magnificent job in answering questions and selling the catalogue.

Grayson Perry came early to the private view in order not to be disturbed while looking around, and spent some time at the vitrines. So many old friends came I almost lost my voice from so much talking. It was in many ways the completion of a circle, fifty years on, the same people, the same newspapers and magazines except this time they were in vitrines as objects of study, historical objects, instead of piled in the corner of the window of Indica Books, yellowing in the sun, or downstairs awaiting distribution. Strange to think it was all 50 years ago and, of course, to be reminded of Hoppy, Mickey Farren, Tom McGrath, Mal Dean, Felix Dennis, Sue Miles, Richard Neville, Edward Barker, Steve Abrams and all the others from the underground press days who are no longer with us.

A couple of weeks later, the new illustrated edition of my In the Sixties was launched with a party in the same gallery, which was appropriate as much of the book is about IT and the underground press. James’s gallery was also where the book was first launched in 2002. Once again, scores of people from my past were there; people I had known for 50 years, like bookseller George Lawson, or 60+ in the case of my old friend Kipps, who I went to school with. A local restaurant gave us a lock in, and a dozen or so of us stayed till 4am. I’m told the party continued long after that.

On the last day Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley came in, Thurston to pick up number one of the special numbered signed edition of the catalogue which also contains four underground papers in a box. We all finished up at the Eagle for a late lunch. In the course of the exhibition I spent quite a lot of time in the gallery as James Birch and I needed a complete inventory of what was for sale and what not. This meant I got to meet many of the visitors, some of whom I vaguely remembered from my days running the Indica Bookshop; it’s easy for someone to remember the guy in the bookshop, but for the guy in the bookshop to remember the maybe 8 or 10 people a day you have a chat to is another matter.

While all this was going on, an exhibition of Michael Basquiat’s work opened at the Barbican. In town for the event was Michael Holman, an old friend of Jean-Michel and a member of his noise-band Gray (named after Gray’s Anatomy, the inspiration for much of Basquiat’s label work). On the way to the party with Michael Holman, we accidentally ran into the Widow Basquiat on the street, who joined us. She is the subject of the beautifully written eponymously entitled biography by Jennifer Clement which I highly recommend to one and all. Rosemary and I used to attend Jean-Michel’s parties at the studio on Great Jones Street in New York that Warhol rented to him and (I think) where they produced many of their collaborations. Now the Eighties seem to be the subject of the same nostalgia as the sixties were. The Mudd Club and Club 57 are revered and the hedonistic revellers are heroic. Twas ever thus.

In my ongoing research into William Burroughs, I came across a line in The Soft Machine (1961) giving his opinion of Twitter users: ‘Posted everywhere on street corners the idiot irresponsibles twitter supersonic approval, repeating slogans, giggling, dancing…’ Good old Bill, prescient as ever.

 

I have spent a lot of time recently selecting the illustrations to go with the re-issue of my In The Sixties book which is coming out at the end of Sepember. It is being re-issued by Rocket 88, friends of mine who used to be packagers, and who I did Hippie; The British Invasion; Peace and several other books with. I made no attempt to re-write the book even though it was tempting. I did add one 3,000 word section: one of the stories I’d left out that several people were surprised not to find when it was first published. It is about going to see Cliff Richard with Paul McCartney and Peter Asher, going backstage and witnessing the uneasy relationship between the fifties star and the new usurpers (this was in 1965). It was fun choosing the pictures, and working with my friend Carla Borel who did most of the re-sizing for me. For example, here’s a picture from The Daily Mirror of Hoppy’s wedding. I was best man, I’m in background between the two lovebirds.

We made the cover a reference to Antonioni’s Blow Up poster, one of Mal Peachy’s brilliant ideas, so it’s all very sixties. That’s Sue Miles in the front, taken from a photograph by Ettore Sottsass in Milan in 1967.

www.inthesixties.com

At the same time, the same publishers are issuing British Underground Papers, the catalogue of the exhibition that James Birch and I have been working on that will be shown at James’s gallery beginning 28 September and running until 4 November. A22 Gallery. 22 Laystall Street. London EC1R 4PA. The show included sets of International Times, Oz, Ink, cOZmic comics, Nasty Tales, Gandalf’s Garden, Friends and Frendz, and the catalogue reproduces the front cover of every issue of every paper, so that’s been taking up quite a bit of time as well. There will be single issues for sale as well as posters and other sixties stuff. The painter Liam Ryan has been working hard getting the gallery ready. Here’s a picture of them discussing Liam’s fees:

 

June saw two events to celebrate Richard Neville, co-founder of Australian Oz magazine (1963), and London Oz (in 1967). Richard died on 4^th September 2016 and a number of his friends including Richard Adams and Tony Elliott put on an event at the Victoria & Albert Museum to celebrate his life. Louise Ferrier and Jim Anderson came over from Sydney for the event. There were speeches, but you can’t expect several hundred people, most of whom had not seen each other in decades, to keep quiet so as a formal event it was a bit of a disaster; as a celebrate of Richard it was a great success. The affair was opened by Tristram Hunt, the V&A’s new director. It’s extraordinary to think that he was born in 1974, the year after Oz went out of business. As is usual at these events I saw people I had not seen since the sixties, and a whole lot of familiar looking people whose name I could not recall. I’m sure we all had the same experience. And of course, conspicuous by their absence were those friends from the underground press who are no longer with us: Hoppy (John Hopkins), Felix Dennis, Mickey Farren; it’s a long list. There were drinks afterwards across the street at the Rembrandt Hotel. Here’s a snap of the three Jameses (or Jims, if you will): Anderson, Moores, Birch at the bar.

The next day, 18 June, Tony Elliott and Janey hosted a garden lunch party at their house in Primrose Hill to enable people to spend more time together. I talked until I almost lost my voice. All the usual suspects were there, and more. Here you have Richard Adams’s hat, Michael Horovitz, Louise Ferrier, Marion Hills, Jim Anderson and Jeff Dexter.

 

 

On 27 June I went to the private view of Natalie du Pasquier’s show at Pace. She is a French artist who has lived and worked in Milan for decades. In keeping with her origins as a founder member, with Ettore Sottsass and George Dowden of the Memphis Group, her work shows her to be a terrific colourist and a master of that dodgy area between painting and sculpture. She built a separate room in the centre of the gallery which contained paintings of paintings, but even there the colours were so intense that it was hard to see what was three dimensional and what was flat. This is a sculpture, for instance, on a real plinth against a red wall:

 

There was an after pv dinner in Soho and here we are, avoiding the London rain.

 

I went straight from there to Bergamo for the literary festival. I was interviewed onstage in the open arcade beneath the medieval town hall, the Palazzo della Ragione with Bergamo’s amazing cathedral to the left and Piazza Vecchia to the right. This was where most of the events took place, open to the public for free, with a huge video screen behind the stage, and free wine for the audience! (and speakers). There was a translator whispering in my right ear, so that I could understand the questions. Here’s a view from the stage, as the audience were getting seated.

Afterwards one of my Italian publishers, Sergio Bestente, took a group of us, including the writer and musician Vittorio Bongiorno to dinner at a rooftop restaurant. When the cathedral bells struck 10:00pm, all the lights went out and we were left with just candles. After a few minutes, they came back on again. We thought maybe it was a power cut but the waitress explained that 10:00 used to be the curfew, when everyone was supposed to blow out their candles and go to sleep. This tradition is still referenced in the present day. We had tried to get into the huge communal restaurant, owned by its staff, but it was booked solid so we could only manage a drink there.

At the end of May we went to Liverpool to see the Tonight At Noon exhibition organised by Catherine Marcangeli to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the publication of The Mersey Sound by Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten. This poetry anthology became a best seller and took poetry out of the academies and into the street, if only for a little while. The exhibition was held at the Liverpool Central Library and, for me – someone who ran a bookshop in the mid-sixties – it was wonderful to see the magazines and ephemera from the period, including many manuscripts and photographs, now lovingly displayed in vitrines. Catherine did a superb job: it really was like time travel. If only Liverpool Council had come up with the money for a catalogue, as originally promised. Running simultaneously, just across the road in St. George’s Hall, was another exhibition organised by Catherine, this time of the visual artwork of Adrian Henri and again, including a number of little known pieces.

While up North we visited Antony Gormley’s wonderful ‘Another Place’ in Crosby: one hundred slightly over life-size (unless he is bigger than I thought) cast-iron statues spread out across three kilometers of the Mersey shore and also, even more dramatically, a kilometer out into the sea. Not to be missed if you are in the area.