1963, London before it swung
Adrian Adam Anderson: Hi Larry
Wrence Fer: Hi Adrian
AAA: On Facebook last week you posted this cryptic image of a guy and said it had something to do with Paul NOT being dead. What???
WF: yeah, I did.
Well, what happened was that Leslie Cavendish had heard via the Gimme Some Truth podcast that someone had put on YouTube an interview he did with New York radio station WMCA in 1969 debunking the wacky rumor that Paul was dead.
Paul staring moodily through the window of their childhood home. Photo by
Mike McCartney, 1962
Paul with kettle and ketchup and instant milk.
Unknown source.
No, he isn’t. Find the podcast via Links, below.
AAA: You heard the interview?
WF: Yeah. Apparently the progressive rock radio host Alex Bennett flew to London in the fall of ‘69 to try to get the Beatles' side of the non-story. I'd never heard of him but apparently he's still working. I take him to be a kind of George Carlin-like character. I dunno.
AAA: Maybe some Beatles60 blog readers don't know who Leslie Cavendish is. Let's explain why Alex Bennett would fly to London and interview him in 1969.
WF: At the time, Leslie was cutting all the Beatles' hair (except I think Maureen Starkey used to cut Ringo's hair most of the time). As one of Sassoon's star hair stylists, Leslie had been cutting Jane Asher's hair in 1966. At some point she asked if he wouldn't mind cutting Paul's hair at Paul's home. So, he entered the Beatles' inner circle through Paul. And, jump a few years ahead, when Americans were “theorizing” that John, George and Ringo were deliberately giving fans “clues” about Paul's supposed death and replacement by an imposter, I guess that radio host Alex thought that Paul's barber should know, as they say in that Rutles song.
Leslie Cavendish with Britt and Carl Ekland at Vidal Sassoon's Salon in Bond Street London.
Leslie Cavendish cutting George Harrison’s hair at Abbey Road Studio.
AAA: Okay. Hang on. What's this got to do with B60, the Facebook group? In the group's universe it's currently the end of May 1963.
WF: Leslie belongs to various Facebook groups, probably, and wasn't aware of the B60 idea that we want to present the sixty-years-ago past in daily sequence. You can post something from the past of the past — like a Buddy Holly hit from 1958 — but we're living in 1963, so each day's posts basically show the Fabs' hair growing at a daily pace. We don't jump to Venus and Mars Paul in one post, then suddenly back to Rubber Soul Paul. Instead we go from the 28th of May 1963 to the 29th of May 1963. Their hair barely grows in 24 hours. We ain't jumpin' around. We're walking in their Beatle boots a day at a time. But many of our VIP members don't know the rule. So, I think Leslie's idea was just to get this out to various groups. B60 was one that he shared to.
AAA: Okay. So, his post goes to the approval queue and you, as a group admin, decide you have to reject it.
WF: Well, no, I left it in queue and didn't know what to do. Leslie's not only a Beatle friend, he's one of the people whose activities in the 60s contributed to what was called Swinging London. So just as I would hate to delete a post from, say, Penelope Tree or Michael Caine or David Bailey or Cathy McGowan… you don't just delete a Leslie Cavendish post.
AAA: Oh, I see. So that's why, instead, you posted this 1963 image that I didn't know was Leslie. It's like a newspaper clipping that has him in a white suit, and a headline… something to the effect that he looked like Ringo Starr…
WF: Yes. I emailed Leslie and asked for a 1963 image, maybe from his personal photo album or something like that. It was a tall, narrow image. I tripled it up so that the image wouldn't get automatically cropped off by Facebook. If I didn't we'd probably get people commenting only on the headline about Ringo. It'd be *too* cryptic!
Young Leslie Cavendish in Mallorca.
Clipping via Leslie Cavendish.
AAA: Okay, then you start turning it into a guessing game. That was confusing as fuck since it seemed to parallel the supposed clues that the Beatles were supposedly offering to alert fans that Paul was supposedly dead. Was that intentional?
WF: No. I had decided that I'd post that ‘63 image and comply with our own 60-years rule. And then I planned to share the 1969 phone call as part of a blog post. And I'm following through on that. The audio will feature in the same post as the transcript of our current chat.
AAA: But why the guessing game?
WF: Well, my challenge was to start (intentionally) with that completely mysterious 1963 visual artifact that nobody's seen before. (It was my idea, not Leslie’s. I’m to blame. Haha.) I had to find a way somehow to lead other members to this radio interview from the fall of 1969, the end of the decade. I came up with the idea to use the Comments thread to drop visual hints that'd somehow lead to 1969 and “Paul's barber should know.” (The Rutles song.) At first I keep it in 1963 with the Nancy Kwan movie. It becomes like a clue to who Leslie was, the connection being Vidal Sassoon.
Left, Vidal with staff working behind him at the
Vidal Sassoon Salon, Bond Street, London, Tuesday 13th August 1963, Photo by Roy Illingworth. Right, Actress Nancy Kwan's haircut proved a major turning point in Sassoon's career. She walked into his salon with 4 feet of hair and left with this short, geometric 'bob' which she showcased in the film The Wild Affair. As he cut her hair, Sassoon was so sure that he was onto something great, he called up top photographer Terence Donovan and took Kwan straight over to his studio to shoot pictures of the style. Those pictures went straight into British Vogue and were then picked up by Vogues all over the world making Sassoon a household name. The 'Nancy Kwan' hairstyle soon became internationally recognised and sought after, creating a worldwide trend." (Telegraph Media Group)
AAA: Yeah. Then you start adding clues from the mid-sixties. Suddenly it's okay to jump around in time?
WF: Yeah, the 60-years-ago timeline rule doesn't apply to comments. And even though 1963 comes just before London swings, and 1969 comes as everyone's coming down from their mid-60s psychedelic haze, the mid-sixties is when Leslie is working with Paul's hair every month.
Leslie Cavendish publicity photo for the opening of the Apple Boutique, Kings Road, Chelsea, London. Photo by John Kelly.
AAA: Essentially, you're traveling ahead in time, which is very un-B60-ish. How can you even post our current chat to the blog. It's supposed to be relevant to 1963.
WF: Here. I'll read you my brainstormed titles and subtitles for this post.
1963, London before it swung: How the seeds of a cultural revolution were sown
1963, London before it swung: The year that changed everything
1963, London before it swung: The people and events that shaped the Swinging Sixties
1963, London before it swung: A glimpse into the dawn of a new era
1963, London before it swung: Before the Beatles, the miniskirt and Carnaby Street
Obviously these are all misleading because I knew I would end up going through the whole decade. I needed a work-around. I decided to provide this elaborate set up to lead up to the context of this 1969 phone interview where Leslie debunks ridiculous conspiracy theories (and those were of course coming from… where else… America).
In the B60 timeline at the end of May (and into June) the boys are touring Britain with Roy Orbison. Americans had barely heard of the Beatles. Yesterday (60 years ago) Dylan released his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob. How am I supposed to jump ahead past the psychedelic era, past the era of John Wesley Harding and Music from Big Pink and the Beatles (white album) and even past Get Back?
AAA: Yeah, Paul and his stylist meet because they're both part of the same mid-sixties London scene. After a few years, Leslie must know the Beatles pretty well.
WF: Yes, he's there on the bus in Magical Mystery Tour. He partners with Apple on a salon business. He even got himself entangled in a short-lived John-is-bald scandal cooked up by the tabloid press. The main point for our current discussion, though, is that the human scalp… each individual's natural hair parting is like a face ID or fingerprint. Leslie demolishes the Paul-is-Dead conspiracy theories simply by knowing exactly how Paul's hair behaves when it's combed back and allowed to fall naturally back into place. It hadn't changed. Case closed.
Paul McCartney, Leslie Cavendish and others who appear in the film waiting for the Magical Mystery Tour coach
Paul McCartney and Leslie on the Magical Mystery Tour
George, Ringo and Leslie Cavendish in the fish and chip shop on The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, Mal Evans in background.
The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour Fish and Chip stop
AAA: Can we hear the 1969 audio now? Leslie talks to Alex of New York radio station WMCA…
WF: Yeah, let's listen.
Alex Bennett in the Sixties
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“The Beatles' hair changed the world. As their increasingly wild, untamed manes grew, to the horror of parents everywhere, they set off a cultural revolution as the most tangible symbol of the Sixties' psychedelic dream of peace, love and playful rebellion. In the midst of this epochal change was Leslie Cavendish, hairdresser to the Beatles and some of the greatest stars of the music and entertainment industry.”
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Libro de bolsillo en español, aquí.
AAA: You told me that you're not gonna lay out any of the content of Paul-is-dead conspiracy theories.
WF: There's no point. They were created out of a hoax. Instead, we should talk about the kind of illogical thinking that creates ridiculous theories. Our species is hardwired to believe our own thoughts. I think XYZ, so it must be true. It's only kept in check by listening to better logic, learning the humility of scientific methods, meditation, and whatnot.
VIDEO: “He blew his mind out in a car…”
I recall watching TV one morning and was able to catch Bryant Gumbel host of the Today show interview Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Galápagos. I just looked up the details. It was on October 23, 1985, on the NBC network. They discussed Vonnegut's new novel (at the time), which is set in the future and depicts the evolution of human beings into seal-like creatures with small brains and flippers. I remember their exchange really well. Bryant puts this question to Kurt: Wait, wouldn't humans evolve bigger brains to solve all our problems? And Vonnegut comes back with the opposite view. (I'm paraphrasing.) He said: Bryant, millions of Americans are watching us right now with their big brains. And they're gonna go out into the world today with those big brains and do a lot of damage -- nuclear weapons, environmental destruction, and social unrest.
You can listen to that entire book, by the way. The audiobook is currently free to listen to on YouTube.
There’s this other talk on YouTube. I think it was a podcast. If you’re interested in the way big brains can think scientifically but also have the option of developing elaborate conspiracy theories. I’ll post it to the blog post of this conversation.
AAA: So, back to the Facebook thread. It was given that the answer to the mystery would be a kind of proof that Paul is not dead. There are many ways to prove it, but you were looking for someone to put “hair” and Leslie together.
WF: Sheila identified Leslie and Jeff noted that individuals have unique hair. They didn't put the two truths together. Maybe Jeff was pretending not to know the answer. He's also admin and has access to the queue.
AAA: The winning answer would've been: Paul's barber should know.
WF: Paul's barber should know.
AAA: The Rutles song?
WF: The Rutles song.
Links
Leslie and Beatles get fish'n'chips
Galápagos. Listen to the whole book (free)
And…
