PORTOBELLO
FILM FESTIVAL 2009
THE BEAT GOES ON
1
Adrift in Notting Hill and A Blues for Shindig
2 Alex Trocchi’s
Invisible Insurrection
3 Longhair
Times: Hoppy and Miles
4 Rolling
Stones on the Portobello Road
5 Michael
X on the Black Beat in the Ghetto
6 Ladbroke
Grove Roots
PART 4
Rolling Stones on the Portobello Road
The local story of
the blues (music rather than clubs) began on Moscow
Road in Bayswater, with Alexis Korner of Blues Incorporated
putting up American blues greats and his British rhythm’n’blues
protégés, including Mick Jagger, Keith
Richards and Brian Jones. When the latter moved to London
in 1962 he’s said to have adopted a cat-like routine
of crawling in through a window and sleeping under Korner’s
kitchen table. After Moscow Road, the local life of
Brian Jones continued at his own pad on Powis Square,
in the Rio café, and at Whiteleys where he briefly
had a job. Mick Jagger was photographed visiting Portobello
market in 1965 with Charlie Watts and Chrissie Shrimpton,
at the time of ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’.
Merseybeat: Portobello
Beatles
If anything, the Beatles
have better Notting Hill street cred than the Stones.
As the Fab Four moved to London in 1964 at the height
of Beatlemania, as well as recording at nearby Abbey
Road, the group inaugurated the Portobello pop market
in Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night.
In the Notting Hill sequence, having been encouraged
to go ‘parading’ by Paul’s grandfather
(played by Wilfrid Brambell, ‘Albert’ from
Steptoe and Son), Ringo Starr first appears on St Luke’s
Road photographing a milk bottle basket outside 2 Lancaster
Road; to an instrumental version of ‘This Boy
(is in love with you)’. From there he’s
chased by two screaming girl fans down Lancaster Road
to All Saints Road.
Ringo founded All Saints as a pop site (some years before
the reggae scene appeared) by running round the north-east
corner of Lancaster Road into the secondhand clothes
shop at number 20 (which was a Japanese art gallery
the last time I looked). As he comes out in beatnik
disguise and heads along All Saints towards Tavistock
Road, a policeman eyes him up and a beatnik girl tells
him to “Get out of it, Shorty.” Ringo’s
‘parading’ sequence concludes with a Keystone
Kops-style chase sequence in Notting Dale, to ‘Can’t
Buy Me Love’, with all the Beatles running in
and out of the police station (the old St John’s
church school hall) on Clarendon Road and along the
bombed out Heathfield Street, where the famous jumping
up in the air film still was taken.
On the Portobello Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, Alice’s
antiques shop at number 86, on the corner of Denbigh
Close, sold the Edwardian police capes modelled by the
group in the early 60s. Down the road at number 100
the Good Fairy arcade hosted a moptops memorabilia stall
in the 90s. Peter Blake found inspiration for the ‘Sergeant
Pepper’ sleeve in the antiques market Victoriana
and the Guards jacket shop I Was Lord Kitchener’s
Valet at number 293. The Merseybeat poet Roger McGough
followed the Beatles to London to live at the south
end of Portobello, as he acquired pop notoriety in his
own right as part of Scaffold (the spoof pop group responsible
for ‘Lily the Pink’) along with Paul McCartney’s
brother Mike McGear; and later as the stepfather of
Happy Mondays manager Nathan McGough. In North Kensington
George Melly, the Scouse surrealist/jazz singer and
author of Revolt into Style, became a Bohemian landmark
on St Lawrence Terrace. In the 90s, at the time of the
Hamburg Beatles film Backbeat (some of which was filmed
locally), the sister of the original bassist Stu Sutcliffe
had a photography gallery at 324 Portobello Road.
The London Free School
After the 1965 beat
poetry happening at the Albert Hall featuring Ginsberg,
Horovitz, Trocchi, Harry Fainlight, etc, the next key
event in the history of British counter-culture was
the 1966 London Free School community action featuring
the first Notting Hill Carnival procession and Pink
Floyd at All Saints church hall. The early Pink Floyd
fans Emily Young and the actress Anjelica Huston have
described themselves at the time of the All Saints hall
gigs as beatnik existentialists or proto-goths, rather
than colourful hippies, always wearing black clothes
and make-up.
The first issue of the Free School newsletter, The Gate,
reported that ‘the photography group (Hoppy and
Graham Keen) was last seen at a ‘happening’
at the Marquee club, surrounded by people dancing around
in cardboard boxes.’ As Hoppy became involved
in the beat ‘Spontaneous Underground’ happenings
at the Marquee, the London Free School music group (Joe
Boyd) spawned the Electra subsidiary label DNA (for
an album by the surrealist jazz band AMM, who performed
in lab coats). For the Easter ’66 CND march, Hoppy
and Miles came up with the ‘Exploding Galactic
Moon’ issue of Longhair Times.
read on -
part 5: Michael X on the Black Beat in the Ghetto
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