TOM VAGUE’S HOLLYWOOD BABYLON W11


INTRO
1 NOTTING HILL IN BYGONE DAYS
2 NOTTING HELL/HEAVEN W11
3 SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
4 HOUSES OF THE UNHOLY
5 ONE FOOT IN THE GROVE
6 MIDDLE EARTH W11
7 THINGS LOOK GREAT IN NOTTING HILL GATE, WE ALL SIT AROUND AND MEDITATE
8 HOUSES OF THE UNHOLY REVISITED

PART 4
HOUSES OF THE UNHOLY

Invocation of My Demon Brother: Jimmy Page/Kenneth Anger In the William Hughes Performance novel, Mick Jagger/Turner’s house isn’t in Powis Square, but on ‘Melbury Terrace – up behind the Notting Hill Gate tube’. This brings the Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page into the frame as an influence on the Turner character. The occult rocker lived in ‘the Tower House’ on Melbury Road, to the south-west of Holland Park; which he bought off the hell-raiser actor Richard Harris, after out-bidding David Bowie. Melbury Road was previously renowned for Pre-Raphaelite artists, and the tower house has themed rooms including an astrology hall with the signs of the zodiac painted on the ceiling. Although he wasn’t living there at the time of Performance, in the early 70s Page loaned the basement of the tower house to Kenneth Anger, the occult writer/director of Hollywood Babylon, Inauguration of the Pleasuredome, and the gay bikers on acid film Scorpio Rising.

Lucifer Rising After Page outbid Anger for an Aleister Crowley Book, he agreed to do the soundtrack for Anger’s psychedelic diabolist film Lucifer Rising. But the pair fell out with Anger saying Page’s ‘attitude was contradictory to the teachings of Crowley.’ Lucifer Rising starred Marianne Faithfull (when she was going out with Mick Jagger) as Lilith, ‘the kabbalistic goddess of destruction’, a ‘female demon, probably of Babylonian origin, supposed to haunt wildernesses in stormy weather’, and the Performance director Donald Cammell as Osiris, the god of the dead/after-life/resurrection; at one point, Mick Jagger was to appear in the title role.

The soundtrack was originally by Bobby Beausoliel, who had been in an early version of Arthur Lee’s Love. But, after his Magick Power House of Oz group played at Anger’s Equinox of the Gods gig in San Francisco, the first cut of the film went missing and they had a bust up. Then Beausoliel was imprisoned for a Charles Manson-related murder. However, after the Jimmy Page soundtrack failed to materialise, Anger got Beausoliel back to do it with his prison band, and the film was eventually released in 1981. The soundtrack of the Lucifer Rising off-shoot, Invocation of My Demon Brother, is a synth dirge by Mick Jagger, while Kenneth Anger also has a claim to influencing ‘Sympathy for the Devil’.

The Loch Ness Monster, Monty Python and the Holy Grail After Anger rented Aleister Crowley’s Scottish retreat, Boleskine House on Loch Ness in 1969, Jimmy Page bought the property the following year. Whilst staying at Boleskine in the early 70s, he was filmed mountaineering for a Led Zep film in the role of the Hermit from the Tarot. Robert Plant, meanwhile, took the King Arthur role, and Led Zep co-financed Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Pink Floyd and Chrysalis. Page did come up with a satisfactory soundtrack for the 1982 film of his Melbury Road neighbour, Michael Winner, Death Wish 2. In another Performance link, John Bindon, who played the most convincing gangster, became Led Zep’s security chief, or ‘master assassin’ in their ‘private strike force’ as he’s described in Stephen Davis’s Hammer of the Gods. As such, Bindon was playing out his own Performance sequel for real, as Chas/Turner’s hitman/roadie in America.

Stairway to Heaven from Basing Street To get back to Notting Hell/Heaven W11, Led Zeppelin frequented the Island studios (now Sarm West) on Basing Street. It was here in 1970 that they recorded some of their Crowley-influenced 4th album, known as ‘Led Zeppelin IV’, ‘Untitled’, ‘Four Symbols’ or ‘The Runes album’, including ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention on ‘The Battle of Evermore’. ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is influenced by the 1946 classic English mystical romance film, A Matter of Life and Death by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (which was released in the US as Stairway to Heaven), and assorted mythological Celtic women. The track is also said to contain the subliminal message, ‘here’s to my sweet Satan.’ On ‘The Battle of Evermore’ Sandy Denny plays ‘the queen of life’ to Robert Plant’s ‘prince of peace’. The sleeve of Led Zep’s 1973 album ‘Physical Graffiti’ featured the Basing Street studio cat in one of the windows, but, you’ll be glad to hear, it survived unscathed.

The Equinox on Holland Street Led Zep’s phenomenal success and various tragedies associated with the group, including the death of the drummer John Bonham, were attributed to a Robert Johnson-style Faustian pact. Jimmy Page was a renowned collector of Crowley manuscripts and first editions, to the extent of opening an occult bookshop named the Equinox after Crowley’s magazine, which specialised in his stuff at 4 Holland Street, off Kensington Church Street. In Pete Frame’s Rockin’ Around Britain a picture of a woman outside the shop, then called Portmeirion (the village in The Prisoner) is captioned: ‘Jimmy Page’s bookshop of the black arts cunningly disguised as a gift shop to lure in old lady.’ In another powerful (and some would say diabolical) heavy rock local link, Tony Blair stayed off Church Street, on Inverness Gardens, in his prog rock gap year.

Closer to the Golden Dawn The spirit of Aleister Crowley was first invoked in pop culture in 1967 (20 years after his death) by the Beatles, when he appeared (next to Mae West) on Peter Blake’s sleeve of ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ – which also features Portobello antiques market ephemera. David Bowie was ‘closer to the Golden Dawn, immersed in Crowley’s uniform of imagery’, while Ozzy Osbourne sang, ‘Wooh yeah, Mr Crowley, yeah, alright!’

Hello Satan, I believe it’s time to go In 1975 Jimmy Page appeared at a party thrown by the hippy socialite Sally Sparkle at the southern end of Portobello, which turned into a heavy rock jamming session, also featuring Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, Ronnie Wood and George Butler. In due course, this caused what has to be the hippest local noise complaint of them all, followed by the least heavy Portobello police incident – in which the rock stars were politely ushered to their limos. ‘Hello Satan, I believe it’s time to go.’

Witchseason in the Court of the Crimson King Chris Blackwell’s Island label made production deals with the Witchseason management company of Joe Boyd (of London Free School, Pink Floyd and Incredible String Band previous) for Fairport Convention, John Martyn and Nick Drake, and with EG for King Crimson, Roxy Music and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The Island studios on Basing Street were also haunted by Spooky Tooth. Chris Wright’s Chrysalis prog rock label (which turned into a multimedia conglomerate on Freston Road in the 90s) started up with an Island licensing deal for Jethro Tull.

Richard Branson’s Faustian pact Richard Branson’s Virgin label was founded with an Island distribution deal for Mike Oldfield’s 1973 album, ‘Tubular Bells’; the head music opus that single-handedly financed the early Virgin years, still renowned for the sample in The Exorcist soundtrack. Virgin’s Vernon Yard 70s HQ on Portobello also hosted the cosmic hippy group Gong, and the German electronic or kraut-rock outfit Faust. The likes of Gong and Camel explored darkly pagan themes at the hippy free gigs under the Westway, while the Led Zep associate folk minstrel Roy Harper frequented Mike’s café on Blenheim Crescent.

Dracula is Dead and Well and Living in London In other local diabolist film links, The Satanic Rites of Dracula (originally Dracula is Dead and Well and Living in London) features actual hells angel Satanic bikers kidnapping a girl on Bard Road, off Freston Road, and a property speculating vampire. In The Omen 3 film, The Final Conflict, Lansdowne Rise stars as the location of the runaway pram scene.

5 ONE FOOT IN THE GROVE