Читать книгу Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall - Chris Welch - Страница 9

One-time bingo caller, tourist waiter and art student Vivian Stanshall had become a bona fide pop star of the late 1960s, courted by the media and fellow-stars. He was the toast of the town, surrounded by hordes of fans and admirers, and he could be relied on to provide great anecdotes and good quotes for the press, even when he was asked to talk off the cuff about a topic as unpromising as the young Prince Charles, then at college: ‘I keep praying that he’s going to freak out when he becomes King,’ said Vivian. ‘He’s at Cambridge, isn’t he? Something evil must happen to him there. Supposing he turns the Palace into a bawdy house? Supposing he goes about stabbing poodles and laying waste the countryside. I wish we could go back to absolute monarchy. At least we’d only have one clot to contend with. I’ve got nothing to do with the way the country is run and nor have you, so we might as well have a tyrant on the throne. He could bring back beheading and drown people in malmsey. It would be nice to flood the Albert Hall and stage animal fights, with hippos eating maidens. At least it would make you laugh. Just something to sweeten the pill.’¹

Vivian’s parents were not overwhelmingly impressed by their son’s elevation into the pop elite. Vivian’s mother remembers Stanshall Senior gave some grudging acknowledgement of their offspring’s new-found status, but ‘he didn’t care really. Vic didn’t care much about anybody else except himself,’ says Eileen. She recalls a paternal presence at Bonzo performances ‘now and then’, though Vivian’s brother Mark insists it never happened.

‘I think Mother was very pleased that Vivian had done something odd, but then it always looked like he would,’ Mark says. ‘But Father, emotionally speaking, was a pretty cold fish and Mother was much more emotional, so really she married the wrong bloke. That’s why she and Vivian got on well, because they needed the comfort of each other in a way.’ By now Vivian had found someone in London who offered the support, sympathy and understanding he needed. Although Vivian’s mother had been against his first love, she clearly approved of Monica Peiser (born 1944), the girlfriend Vivian knew from college. He met her when he was still going to art school in Southend and would bring her to the Stanshall home in Beech Avenue.

Monica and Vivian had much in common. They shared the same sense of humour and love of art, music and books. She joined in the gags, jokes and games. As a young student, Monica read French literature and went to Central School of Art in the early 1960s to study art and design. At the canteen table, having lunch on a perfectly ordinary day, she became aware of a presence. All around her fellow-students were seated at the Formica-topped tables, chatting, eating egg and chips and the usual greasy student fare. Amid the hubbub and animated discussion she could not help but notice a young man watching her from a distance. She noted his loud check suit and a stiff celluloid collar with studs and tiny glasses. She also observed the pair of huge rubber ears he sported.

She still shakes with laughter at the memory. ‘I was conscious of somebody coming and sitting down beside me, but I wouldn’t look up, I was so in awe of him. I didn’t know what on earth to say to him.’ She looked up only to discover something else ghastly. The vision before her had segments of pink, plastic ping-pong balls neatly inserted over each eye, under octagonal spectacles. It gave his face an aspect more menacing than comic.

‘One pair of those tiny glasses he wore were really horrid. They were silver-rimmed in blue glass, which was extraordinarily frightening, especially on a man with a huge red beard. I was certainly curious about him.’ She had known of Vivian before that day in the canteen, having been friendly with fellow-student Larry Smith. ‘The two of them – Larry and Vivian – were always together. They were like brothers. But Larry was much more outgoing and chatty. It took a long time for me to get to know Viv.’

Monica was born in England of German-Jewish parents. Bilingual, her ability inspired Vivian to learn German. ‘He did O-level German and he spoke it with the most appalling English accent, which I teased him about. He never accepted that he didn’t have a perfect German accent.’ Vivian’s fascination with language went right back to his years as a teenage teddy boy when, he later said, ‘my major achievements were learning a lot of Gypsy tongue and getting involved in fights, brawls and outrages’.²

Ki Longfellow, Vivian’s second wife, also encountered his alleged linguistic abilities: ‘He could do anything, which is how he got away with his cod French and cod German, which he professed to speak fluently. But he didn’t have a clue. He got away with it an awful lot. He tried it with me but I can speak French and I knew perfectly well that he couldn’t, although his German was just a little better.’

Monica: ‘He also spoke Swahili. Well, I’ve no idea whether he really spoke Swahili. But he claimed he could speak the language, which is a fine claim. Who could doubt him? He was always interested in Africa and knew a lot about the tribes and their traditions. He collected African tribal art. Did he go to Africa? In his dreams. He had very vivid dreams, almost to the point of not knowing which was reality. He often went to ancient Rome.’ The attempts to learn Swahili came from doing the rounds of junk shops as a youngster, where Vivian bought books on exploration and African culture.

When she realized the date of Vivian’s twenty-first birthday was not far off, Monica discovered that he had nobody to share a celebration with and the two went to a college dance. ‘I always say my fate was sealed on 21 March 1964. From then on we were inseparable. The three of us, Larry, Vivian and myself, were all great friends.’ Vivian proved a much warmer, more gentle person than appearances implied. Monica was charmed to discover that a kinder nature, almost parental, lurked beneath the beard and the comedy accessories.

‘He used to tell me stories, which were lovely. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person that he did that to, but it was delightful when he told them to me and with such a rich vocabulary and wonderful command of the language.’ She lost patience, though, with his more obscure flights of fancy, saying, ‘Don’t be so silly – using words that nobody understands. What is the point of using language that nobody can understand?’

‘Well, they should understand!’ he’d roar. Monica remembers, ‘He could switch on the very big voice, which was terrifying.’ She was introduced to the rest of Vivian’s family, including his father. They all met up in the City and she discovered he was a real City gent – bowler, pinstripe suit, black jacket and carnation. Monica had heard of such people but didn’t realize they actually existed. In a way, she says, he was also ‘acting’ for most of his life. He was not as high up in his company as he made out, and forever being the upright citizen; these were some of the reasons she feels he was hard on his son, who was unconcerned by what others thought: ‘His father hated him because he was exactly himself. He could brush opinion aside,’ says Monica.

Vivian was also unconcerned about making himself the centre of attention in public. He would bellow in restaurants, on underground trains and even in the cinema. On one occasion she accompanied the Bonzos to Cardiff, where they decided to go to the cinema in the afternoon. The whole band went to see a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. More disturbing than the sounds of screeching birds diving to attack was Vivian making extremely frightening noises, roaring in the back row. By the end of the film, the other patrons were cowering under the seats.

When the young couple were alone together, Vivian was gentle. ‘He did model his voice on Noël Coward, including the inflections and rather old-fashioned choice of words and even his dress,’ says Monica. ‘I never heard him swear or use obscenities in the home. That was something for out there. Never with me.’ But then that was very much the way he had been brought up in Southend. The alcohol was a different matter. The culture of the band was very much one of drinking and Vivian took to it with his customary energy and passion. As a pop star, drinking was to be expected and few people around him saw it as a problem. Rod Slater was one of the few who spotted the danger signs relatively early.

‘One of the things you could never do was enjoy the pleasure of having a drink with Viv,’ he says. ‘You could never do that. I remember the last time I had a drink with him, we got kicked out of the pub.’ Rod had simply popped around to Vivian’s place in north London and off they went to the pub. ‘He had two pints of beer and he was away. He was causing chaos. Suddenly the penny dropped at last. I realized that I must never drink with Viv again because this was what happened. And I never did. I never had a drink with him again.’ The idea of a couple of pints and the resumption of normal activity was not quite Vivian’s way. His active mind and eager desire for stimulation – whether mental or physical – meant that he became over-excited by alcohol quite quickly. If he did over-indulge it wasn’t long before the next phase would set in, when he became silent, tongue-tied and morose. But for much of his time with the Bonzos, he was far more concerned with being creative, with reading, painting, drawing, playing music and widening his circle of friends. In the early days of their romance, Monica was one of the few band girlfriends who dared to travel with the Bonzos to their various pub gigs. At the Deuragon Arms and the Tiger’s Head she collected the money for the gig. ‘It was great fun and I adored the music. I found the whole thing exciting and exhilarating.’ The couple became inseparable. When at last the band was a success and its lead singer a star, they could afford to live together and raise a family. Vivian and Monica were married on 1 January 1968 at Colindale Register Office.

‘It was an awful place and it was snowing. The registrar came in eating her sandwiches out of a paper bag. She sat down at the wedding desk to finish her sandwiches. It was par for the course,’ she laughs. There was not even time for a honeymoon. The next morning the bridegroom had to rush off with the Bonzos to record a TV show. ‘The band were extremely busy. So in fact we never had a honeymoon. I think he was frightened of not being home. He later developed agoraphobia and I think that was the start of it. Unless he was with the band, which was his safety net, he wouldn’t go anywhere.

He would go out, but he wouldn’t go on holiday. He had to have a structure to the evening, or he couldn’t relax.’ The Stanshalls settled at 221 East End Road in East Finchley. Monica remembers their time together was largely characterized by hilarity: ‘We giggled like children endlessly,’ she says. Vivian was always hatching some mischief, laughing at some absurdity in the newspaper or just chortling. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, there was some kind of merriment near the surface.

The couple’s son, Rupert, was born 27 June 1968, when Vivian was twenty-five. His manner was coloured by many of Vivian’s traits, including a dark sense of humour and a distinctive speaking voice. With his red hair and fiery temperament bubbling beneath the surface, there was soon a startling physical resemblance to his father. To Rupert’s chagrin, the kids at school did not fail to connect his name and red hair to Rupert the Bear. The character had been a favourite of Vivian’s.

Intelligent, precocious, and exposed to many and varied intellectual pursuits and eccentricities, Rupert was surrounded by books and instruments as a child. He was encouraged to take an interest in natural history and was sent to Christ’s College, a respected school in Finchley. He had problems as a student and his relationship with his mother suffered.

‘Monica couldn’t control me,’ he explains. ‘She wanted me to be the academic super-boy, because Vic was uncontrollable.’ The boy was more interested in selling, from the time he was in school. If anything, his father was more inclined to study. Vivian devoured books and took a keen interest in zoology and tropical fish. He also attempted home-improvement projects, in his own fashion. Monica remembers: ‘He liked digging holes. He dug up our garden, making a huge hole which was going to be a pond, but never was completed. It was just left – as a big hole. He liked anything creative and making a pond was a creative act. When I finally left the house in East End Road I was told that I had to take down all the shelving. This not only held heavy rows of books but six-foot fish tanks full of turtles. I found the shelving had been fixed to the walls with six-inch nails. No screws or Rawlplugs. Just nails, whacked into the walls. The whole lot could have come down at any time.’ The mania for physical creation was often an excuse to put off writing or working with the band. It also gave Vivian a reason to get busy with his power tools.

‘Now, power tools and alcohol do not mix,’ explains Rupert. ‘He bought himself a bench saw, which he installed at 221 East End Road and which was kept in the lean-to garage, full of props from the Bonzos. I always remember it was full of Mickey Mouses and speech bubbles which I used to play with. He was always sawing things up and making sculptures. The machines he used were a bit daunting and he’d say to me, “Grrr – this has got big teeth on it.” The screaming coming from the shed on a regular basis, when he’d caught himself, was louder than the saw itself. He had this big thing about how all tools and chisels must be kept clean and sharp. Then he would forget them. He wouldn’t put the caps back on or remember to clean the chisels. He’d pull them out and you’d hear this angry roaring: “Rah, rah, rah!’”

Vivian was very much the absent-minded artist. He became absorbed in whatever it was he was doing and daily chores went straight out of the window, unless they involved his work. ‘He was really hot on his musical instruments,’ says Rupert. ‘As a result I was always very careful with stuff. I didn’t break anything, so he’d let me tune things. But on the whole – you didn’t dare touch ‘em. Even if you’d get them out of the case, his sensors would let him know you were there and what you were doing.’

As a child, growing up with an unstable artist as a father affected Rupert. ‘When he was sober he was more interested in himself and when he was pissed he was quite interested in getting something out of someone else.’ He sent Rupert to have bass guitar lessons with Ronnie Lane of the Faces and the boy learned the trumpet at school. Rupert liked other big brass instruments as well. Several mangled specimens of tuba lay in the garden, pressed into use as planters, which were fun to play around with for Rupert, and he liked to climb inside his father’s big tuba case.

There was not much fatherly advice about issues other than music, however. ‘It was very easy to say things like, “Whatever you want to be – be lucky.” It was all that sort of stuff,’ says Rupert. ‘Easy ticket, isn’t it? But as a dad he did spoil me with Scalextric toys and that sort of thing. To me he was normal, but God knows what that would be to somebody else. I thought he was normal, but nobody else thought he was. He was my dad so he’s gotta be normal, hasn’t he?’ It was a lot for the boy to live up to, though. Not only was his father famous, but from an extremely young age, Rupert always had the unshakable feeling that his father wanted another member of the band to collaborate with, rather than a son to look after: ‘He couldn’t handle a child,’ says Rupert. ‘He needed someone he could bounce off, so I had to grow up bloody quick.’

At 221 East End Road, it was just Vivian, Monica, Rupert and a few dozen assorted fish, reptiles and downright terrifying beasties. Vivian took his interest in wildlife seriously: he was a member of the Zoological Society and attended their meetings. At London Zoo, he used to have discussions about reptiles with some of the keepers and swap locusts with them. But the main subjects of interest were the forbidding tanks cluttering Vivian’s home. ‘I’m trying to become a pisciculturist,’ he told Melody Maker. ‘I’m less interested in fish than I am in turtles, really. I like evil fish of archaeological interest and things that are not strictly fish like axolotls, on the knife-edge of evolution. It’s a cool world in a fish tank. If you get a balanced aquarium, you can watch them eat their children. It’s like life, very cruel, which is why I like it. I often watch in the nude and a rubber mackintosh.’³

Guests at the Stanshall household frequently came face to face with their worst nightmares, when all they were expecting was a cup of tea or glass of beer. They watched Vivian feed the fish and turtles raw meat and those who stayed the night shared a bedroom with large tanks from which emanated creepy gurgles and splashes. Vivian found the expression of alarm on his guests’ faces as they contemplated trying to sleep with monsters of the deep, lurking only inches from the bed, hugely entertaining. As the tanks were often pretty murky, it was difficult to make out what was inside. ‘There’s piranhas in there,’ Vivian would confide in his most doom-laden tones. He maintained his zoological interest even when he was on tour. Given a large turtle by Glen Colson of Charisma Records, he kept it in the sink in his hotel bedroom. Unfortunately, the abandoned turtle was left hungry while the singer was away at the evening’s performance, and when he finally returned to the room to inspect his latest acquisition, the outraged turtle leaped out and bit him.

Roger Wilkes also remembers the illuminated, bubbling Finchley fish tanks. ‘He loved turtles and snakes. He lost one in the house. A big snake. It went under the floorboards. He said one evening: “Just watch out, it may show up.’” This was not uncommon. Many of Vivian’s friends speak of different occasions when he would casually announce that something horrifying and scaly had nipped out of its tank without permission.

‘There was an aquarium in the hallway and when we looked at this fish he said, “Don’t touch it, or you’ll be dead within half an hour,”’ recalls his drummer friend John Halsey. ‘Then he said, “I’ve lost a snake. I had this bloody snake in a box under my bed and it’s gone.” I didn’t know if he was winding us up or not but he said some deadly snake had escaped and was somewhere in the house.’ Mark Stanshall remembers Vivian would take any opportunity to exploit people’s natural anxiety around slithery, scaly things. ‘He used to claim that when he went away he used to let a couple of snakes out,’ says Mark.

Vivian explained the best way of retrieving one of his pets: ‘Black bastards,’ he growled to Mark. ‘You have to get ‘em with a dustbin lid.’ Rupert Stanshall grew up among the would-be escapees and confirms, ‘Yes – a couple of the snakes escaped. I can’t remember if they were pythons or boa constrictors. He lost one by putting it in a rabbit run, with a tortoise…It seemed like a good idea at the time. He put it in the run, and it buggered off. Another one he lost in a small toilet downstairs. I’ve no idea what he was doing. Allegedly, he was trying to help it give birth. He told his dad about that and Vic would never use that lavatory again in case he got snakebite.’

The aquatic specimens got the worst of it. ‘He once had a catfish which got boiled,’ says Rupert. ‘He was – er – not very careful with the fish. The turtles only lasted because they are so hardy.’ Vivian was more encouraging towards Rupert’s naturalist instincts than he had been about music, giving his son membership of the Young Zoological Society. ‘So I began to keep snakes and that sort of stuff too. I ended up with about twenty tanks in the house and Dad had loads more. It had rubbed off on me because he kept turtles, snakes and various fish that didn’t last very long.’ Rupert could soon identify garden spiders by their Latin names and Vivian kept a few of the larger species.

‘The tarantula snuffed it,’ he told an interviewer sadly. ‘We didn’t notice for three days and it had been such a lively little rascal.’ Any space in the house not covered by tanks was used to display examples of his other passions. Upstairs he had arranged his props from the band. In the front room he had rows of African masks and talking drums and on the stair was a zebra’s bottom, mounted on wood, which gave the effect of the zebra having been caught running through the wall. This was, it is safe to assume, the only house with a mounted zebra bottom in the whole of Finchley, the constituency that elected Margaret Thatcher as its MP.

That the Stanshall house was in such a conventional neighbourhood meant unsuspecting sales representatives were regularly lured to East End Road like docile mice to one of Vivian’s snakes. He regularly sent off for items from the classified advert sections in magazines such as Exchange and Mart, which offered everything from concrete coal bunkers to bass saxophones and tropical fish. If something caught his eye, he would order it under an assumed name, his favourite being St John Danvers. Sometimes a company representative called to follow up the response. The woman from Dolphin Showers was one of those who drew the short straw.

Vivian spotted an advert in the paper for a portable power shower that he could assemble at home. He wrote off for a free demonstration, signing his application Mr Penguin. It was not long before the Dolphin representative called. That day, as he related it, Vivian was cleaning out his fish tanks, naturally wearing a full wetsuit with flippers, and was just getting his turtles out on the floor when the front doorbell rang. He flapped down the corridor and opened the door.

‘Yes?’ There was the woman from the shower company. To her credit, she looked the vision up and down and, with great presence of mind, merely asked, ‘Is Mrs Penguin at home?’ With the help of his friend Andy Roberts, Vivian arranged a time for the Dolphin representative to return to meet the lady of the house and discuss the installation of a hot shower. There was a garage by the side of the house with a small window facing the front door. During the following week they set up an 8mm movie camera inside the garage pointing through the window. They dug a grave on the front lawn, piled up the earth and put a crude wooden cross on top.

‘I got in the garage at the appointed time and waited with the camera for the woman from Dolphin Showers to show up and meet Mrs Penguin,’ says Andy. ‘Vivian was going to answer the door in a black suit and tell her in sepulchral tones that he was terribly sorry but Mrs Penguin had been called away. I was standing there poised for hours to film this woman’s reaction.’ It was not to be. For some reason, the rep never returned to East End Road. Another female official, however, this one from National Insurance, experienced the same treatment. She arrived to discuss some contributions that Stanshall had not paid. He invited her inside to talk, in his turtle room where he kept Stinky, the man-eating turtle. Stinky was only two inches in diameter, but would obligingly clank up against the glass tank, which was labelled ‘Man-eating turtle’. Vivian came into the room wearing an old woman’s wart mask and bright yellow trousers with his stomach hanging over the waistband. The woman was absolutely terrified. They decided to shake on a deal for no money at all and she left – another one who was never to return. He also had an argument, says Rupert, with some men in the street when he was ‘dressed in his Jewish renaissance black cloak and hat. He frightened them off. I think they thought he was Dracula.’

The local constabulary were aware of Mr Stanshall’s presence, and once almost arrested him for breaking and entering. Admitted Vivian, ‘I must say, the one I met last night when I was breaking into the house was a perfectly nice chap. But it was quite obvious he thought anybody with long hair had no right to live in a house, and it was my house. I had forgotten my key and didn’t want to wake up the wife.’⁴ The family put up with this kind of thing on a daily basis, but then it was hard to be surprised when their garden was kitted out with an eight-foot-tall gnome who smoked dope. A tube was connected through the kitchen to a set of bellows on which Vivian stamped to make the papier-mâché gnome emit clouds of smoke.

Whenever the urge to create some new piece of art or invention took him, Vivian utilized whatever came to hand, no matter whom it belonged to. ‘He used to pinch things. If he liked something, he’d just pinch it,’ says Rupert. ‘I don’t know if he did it to friends, but he did it to his family. “Oh, I like that ornament.” Gone. And he had a habit of altering them and decorating them in his own special way, which could be anything from painting over them to sticking fag butts on them.’ The Bonzos sang about suburban convention. This was Vivian’s own ‘pink half of the drainpipe’.