Going to Sea in a Sieve: The Autobiography (15 page)

Ladies and gentlemen, I too simply have no idea how on earth I got away with all this nor what the hell I thought I was up to.

Lorraine and I finished our fling about three months later. She never did get to meet David.

I Went to a Marvellous Party

T
he truly bizarre thing about my double life as David Essex’s brother was that during the entire period I was actually, virtually daily, moving in the society of tangible, flesh-and-blood, big-league pop superstars. One Stop was not only the store of choice for the discerning music buyer, its vital and rarefied vinyl attracted most top musicians anxious to keep abreast of whatever was trending in the new American releases.

I knew that Elton John had previously worked alongside our manager John in Soho, but I hadn’t realized that, to some extent, his stratospheric success in performing had actually taken him away from this job that he’d loved. Consequently whenever he had a break in his global performing schedule he’d race home to see what was on our shelves.

The South Molton Street shop itself was a small, one-unit affair with album browsers arranged in an L-Shape along one wall and under the window. Against the other wall were two large glass-doored listening booths from which we often had to eject moochers who had clearly come in, not to buy anything, but to kill a lunch hour listening to their favourite record. Single records were displayed on the counter with back-up copies of each title stored on shelves beneath. It was while I was crouching down among these 45s, refilling a batch of Isley Brothers, Fatback Band or simply Slade’s latest, when somebody, bold as brass, walked up to the counter, lifted the bit that was marked STAFF ONLY and quickly strode into the minuscule area behind the till that served as the shop’s office. What’s more, from my cowering vantage point, I could identify this interloper only by the startling fact that he was wearing silver and red spangled stack-heeled shoes with little wings attached to the sides.

Enter Elton.

Now Elton John is still a huge, huge star. But in 1973 he was by some distance the BIGGEST star in the world. It was said that during this time he was responsible for 2 per cent of all records sold globally – an astonishing statistic given how huge, crowded and lucrative the music market was then. And here he was, less than three feet away on a drizzling Tuesday morning in W1, cuddling my friend John, kissing his cheek and asking with brotherly affection how on earth he was doing.

The only other famous person I’d ever been near to was Charlton FC’s 1968 assistant manager Eddie Firmani, who had given me a medal following my team’s victory in the Southwark Park under 12s five-a-side tournament.

I stood up. Both Elton and John turned to me. I was looking right into the extravagant glasses of the most famous person on the planet.

‘This is Danny,’ said John. ‘Started here last month.’

The next ten seconds may have been one of the most pivotal moments of my life. When, as a young teenager, you are lobbed into a position where you are so plainly out of your depth, so under-prepared in life to negotiate, and faced with a scenario so far-fetched that it may as well have come from the pen of Arthur C. Clarke, you are left with certain options. You can faint. You can flounder. You can start to cry. Or you can make out that the seismic circumstances under way are so much to your way of doing things that you barely noticed a shimmer in the cosmic canopy. There and then I found that I had a disposition to entertain the last of these.

‘Hello, mate!’ I said, shoving out my hand. ‘You support Watford, don’t you?’

Elton looked entertained by my verve. ‘Yes, tragically,’ he beamed back, then as Elton would, he said, ‘I notice he’s got you on your knees already, dear.’

I laughed. He laughed. We all laughed! Elton John: my new mate. Well done, everyone. Back at West Greenwich I calculated they’d have all been going into a double History lesson about now – probably with homework.

We had some chit-chat about football – which manager John ducked out of, having not the slightest interest – and I think it clicked with Elton that I supported Millwall, a team as unfashionable as his own. Then the world’s leading talent got on with what he really enjoyed. Serving himself records. He would potter about the shelves, usually taking two or three copies of each record, as well as cassettes and eight-tracks of everything for music-on-the-move. When we were down to the last copy of something and the sleeve would be out in the browser racks, he would know exactly where that would be located and fetch it himself. He would bring in long lists of things he needed or records he wanted ordered, complete with the album’s factory catalogue number alongside – the mark of anyone who has ever worked in a shop. More than once he would be crouched down invisible beneath our counter, rifling through the singles shelves, when in would come an unsuspecting punter. Sensing someone was there, they would ask whether we had the new Stylistics record in yet. Up would stand Elton John, who would then sell it to them. It is surprising how much a person’s hand can shake simply removing a banknote from their wallet.

Whenever Elton was tied up with the more mundane business of, say, an American tour, he would have a runner from his London office come in weekly to make sure there wouldn’t be any holes in his collection. This task usually fell to a blond kid from Orpington about the same age as me called Gary Farrow. We both seemed to tacitly acknowledge that we had fallen on our feet amidst a very sweet racket indeed. Gary had also worked at One Stop, though later he thoroughly disgraced the old brand by turning out to be the leading PR agent in Britain, steering not only Elton’s career but those of David Bowie, George Michael, Jonathan Ross, Sharon Osbourne and Gordon Ramsey. To his credit, he also advised Robbie Williams to quit show business when Robbie originally left Take That.

One day Mick Jagger came in. He was surprisingly small and slight, although his head appeared to be built from a much grander blueprint. Altogether, this made him look like one of those novelty figures you sometimes see bobbling about in the back windows of people’s cars. He was after a copy of Dobie Gray’s
Drift Away
album. In fact, he told me so.

‘Av y-oo got. Aee copay . . . of the Doh-bee Gra-ee reckoord – Drift-t Aw-way-hee?’ he drawled.

I let him know we were the only place that had it and I slapped it down on the counter. ‘Two ninety-nine that is,’ I informed him. Mick then treated me to a personal piece of theatre. Half-turning to an enormous black chap who was obviously his minder, he held out a long spidery arm. The minder took out a fat wallet and removed a crisp five-pound note that he then placed in Mick’s lilywhite hand. In a single balletic motion, MJ then arced his arm all the way through 180 degrees and very delicately placed the fiver down on the counter. He tap-tapped it by way of punctuation. During the entire movement he had not looked at either me or the minder. I handed him the LP in one of our bags and then proffered the change. Mick didn’t acknowledge it. The big fellow stepped forward and took it from me instead. Then, with a grand sigh, Mick fixed me with a huge knowing smile that seemed to dare me to find him preposterous. ‘Cheers,’ he said, making the word break into two descending notes before sashaying out of the shop. Puffed up? Not a bit. I thought the exchange had been terrific. That’s how I like my stars. Starry. Over two decades later I recalled this grand visitation when I encountered Mick a second time, on this occasion a Rolling Stones filming job in Chicago. As I pantomimed for him his actions that day, hands clasped between his thighs he doubled up with laughter. ‘Did I do that?’ he roared. ‘Oh dear. Yes, well you see I am basically very shy . . .’

Demis Roussos ambled in once and stood in the centre of the shop looking around him as though it was a hotel suite that particularly displeased him. Next he walked to the R section of displayed LP sleeves and, removing the few albums by him that we stocked, he proceeded to shove them with some force into the front of the A section at the beginning of the browsers. Then he nodded truculently at us and walked out.

Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band would often wander in drunk as a lord and attempt to engage both customers and staff – there was only John and me – in rambling conversation. For me, Stanshall was then, and remains to this day, among the top band of human beings who ever drew breath, but these were bad times for him. The stink of serious drink spun around Viv like the rings of Saturn; it was enough to fry your eyebrows. On one of the occasions he visited us he had a light bulb taped atop his shaven head. On another it was fuzzy felt shapes of different countries, so his dome became a map of the world. Later he sported the most impressive plaited Pharaoh-like red beard. ‘I’ll tell you what I want, old cork,’ he’d say, leaning on the counter and beckoning me in with crooked finger. ‘I want everything. The whole lot.’ He’d wave his arm about as if indicating an expansive plot of land. ‘What’ll it cost me?’ I’d tell him a couple of grand should secure it. ‘A grapple of canned? Shame. I was thinking more in the region of fourpence. New pence, no rubbish.’ This babble would trail off into a high-pitch boozy giggle, as if to let us know he too knew how silly and tragic it all was. Then, with a swig from the brandy bottle, he’d lurch away to stick his head into a listening booth, startling its occupant.

Good though I was with our Olympian clientele, I confess the first time Marc Bolan came in I thought I was going to go off like a rocket and sit sizzling in the rafters. As already described, the shop was a small space and people just bounced straight in off the street to be presented in front of you like the next hopeful to be auditioned on our well-lit stage. When that someone is Marc Bolan and it’s 1973, you have only a few seconds to think, ‘Okay, okay. Got it. That’s Marc Bolan. And this is me. He is looking right at me and in precisely two more footsteps’ time he is going to talk to me. I, me, will be engaging with Marc Bolan. Don’t be loopy. Don’t do what you did with Michael Caine and shout, “Whoa, Michael Caine – top customer ahoy!” ’

I didn’t. I said, ‘Ha! Marc Bolan! There’s something!’ I may have even loudly warned him to have a care as we employed several store detectives – always a favoured joke of mine to shout in a shop barely the size of most people’s front rooms.

‘Hi, darling, is John about?’ he said in a bouncy Bolan-esque style, not unlike Marc Bolan.

John appeared immediately with a playfully caustic, ‘Well. Hello, stranger. Where the fuck have you been? This is Danny. He’s in love with you, so careful he doesn’t leap on you or something.’

There was some truth in this. When first taken on and informed, ‘They all come in here, so get over it,’ I had asked, possibly breathlessly, whether Marc Bolan or David Bowie could be included in that number. Ian had answered, ‘Bowie might do – did a bit before he tarted himself up – but Marc’s in and out all the time. Call him Mary: he loves it.’

I was not going to call him Mary. As far as I know, nobody ever called Marc Bolan Mary, but I did come to know many of Elton’s crowd by their feminine handles.

Marc and John disappeared into the small back area and gossiped over tea. I had to stay out and man the counter. I didn’t mind that – in showbiz, pretending to be professional and cool is one of the most cool and professional bluffs you can master. However, by now, I was brooding over something.

How
did
John know everyone? Pushing the philosophy further, I wondered how, in fact,
everyone
seemed to know everyone. I had often watched
This Is Your Life
and asked myself the same question. In theatrical circles, everyone seemed to have known everyone else for ever. They were all mates. How did that happen? I can understand that you might cross paths with a couple of subsequent celebrities on the struggle upwards, but how was it possible that entire legions of the famous charged into the spotlight en masse and linking arms?

I didn’t know anyone. Nobody in my family or army of friends knew anyone either. You’d have thought that we’d know at least someone, but no. I had never once been round a mate’s house and when the phone rang somebody answered it and said, ‘Joyce! Harry Secombe on the phone for ya.’ It just didn’t happen. And that’s Harry Secombe! You can imagine the remoteness of a John Lennon or even Kiki Dee. Yes, I had pretended to be David Essex’s brother, but it was precisely because nobody had a clue how an anomaly like that could exist and behave that I got away with such flapdoodle. And remember: not David Essex. His brother.

Now here I was. I knew Elton John. I’d made Long John Baldry a cup of tea. Run after Rod Stewart when he’d left his Access card in the machine (calling him a dozy git into the bargain), and now Marc Bolan – who Bernard Sibley and I had once imagined kidnapping and making him tell us all about the real meaning of Tyrannosaurus Rex lyrics – had just called me darling. He was sitting three feet behind me –
behind me
. When I’d paid to see him at the Lyceum Theatre I had battled and sweated for every inch that I could get closer to him onstage. Now he was less than a guitar case away and here I was, turning my back and doing a terrific impression of a man reading the
NME
. What on earth was going on?

After a short while Marc emerged past me again – I confess I took a whiff of what he smelled like as he inched by (Sweet Musk) – and began sorting out a few albums from the racks that he wanted to take with him. His browsing style indicated that in terms of having a finger on the pulse, he was no Elton John; he would hold up LP sleeves and shout, ‘John – what’s this? Any good?’ To which John would reply either, ‘Yeah, you’ll like that,’ or ‘Oh, please! Fucking dreadful.’ I was on the verge of also giving my opinion to Marc, but was sadly too busy not reading the paper.

Sneaking direct looks at him, I now noticed he was wearing The Greatest Shirt Ever Made. Between the open buttons of his full-length bottle-green coat, I could see it was of the palest peach silk and had Warhol-like prints in various bold colours of Chuck Berry doing the duck walk. This was a shirt that, if taken at the flood, might lead to greatness. As he came to the counter with an armload of covers I let him know. ‘Mary,’ I said (though instead of Mary I said ‘Mr Bolan’), ‘that is the greatest shirt I have ever seen on a person. Where’s it from?’