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| John and Cynthia in 1964 |
This is one of those "scandalous" tell-all stories about sex, drugs, and John Lennon. It is very gossipy, and who knows if it is true? I had never heard it before. Nevertheless, it is an interesting look into a different side of "Swinging" London in the mid-60s. (Reading with a grain of salt)
Joint Accounts
By Cherri Gillham
The Observer
September 10, 2020
I don't wish to be a killjoy, but a brilliant, authoritative new book on the life of Bob Dylan by Clinton. Heylin has a flaw in it. Halen credits Dylan with having introduced the Beatles to marijuana in August 1964. Apparently, Dylan dropped in on the Fab Four in a New York hotel, and not finding any of the cheap wine he preferred to the champagne on offer, he rolled a joint. Paul McCartney is quoted as saying, "he discovered the meaning of life that evening," and it has thus gone down in Dylan's legend that that was the moment the Beatles first got high on weed.
It might have been a first for Macca, but I know for certain that it wasn't for John Lennon. Lennon took his first puff or two of pot a few months earlier, in the spring of 64, in a basement flat in Bayswater. Not only did he smoke his first joint, or "reefer", as it was called then, but he also threw up. I know this because I was there.
I was a Frank Sinatra, an Ella Fitzgerald fan then, and I didn't "get" the Beatles until Sgt. Pepper three years later. So, meeting John Lennon did not have the same appeal for me as the memory of it does today. But even if I was not enamored, I knew that it was a seminal moment to see Lennon sick in the bath after his first smoke.
There had been so much made of The Beatles, their clean-cut image, those lovable mop tops. Beatlemania had swept Europe in the previous autumn, and the Beatles had been at the top of the album charts for 51 consecutive weeks with their first album, Please Please Me. They had a clutch of number one singles, and by the end of 1963, their single, "She Loves You," was the biggest-selling single of all time in the UK. In February 64, just before I met John Lennon, The Beatles conquered the US with 10,000 screaming fans awaiting their arrival at JFK airport. At the end of March '64, they had the awe-inspiring top five slots on the Billboard charts with "Can't Buy Me Love " and " Twist and Shout," "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me". In March, they were filming A Hard Day's Night.
How John and Cynthia came to be in that flat in Palace Court., I do not know. It belonged to a couple called Pat and Tony Shaw. Pat was an incredibly beautiful 28-year-old, hourglass, blonde, and Tony was a portly, bearded, jovial man in his 50s with a penchant for watching his wife in bed with other men. I lived around the corner in Clanricarde Gardens, and a few weeks before, had been invited to a beatnik party a few doors along from my flat. I braved it and went alone.
The place was full of scruffy people sitting around on the floor. The air was thick with smoke and dope. I felt out of my depth, a bit wary, and was about to leave when a stunning threesome stepped into the halo of light in the hallway, a beautiful blonde in a shimmering silver dress flanked by two handsome men with glittering blue eyes and wearing identical Prince of Wales check suits. To my astonishment, one of the men asked me to dance. His name he told me he was Baron Pierre Cervello, and he was engaged, he later told me to Mandy Rice Davies, who was involved in the then-breaking Profumo scandal.
Over the next few months, Pierre would introduce me to an under life in London which was both breathtakingly sordid and wondrous at the same time. Orgies with film stars and nobility and layers of willing girls. I was an innocent 18-year-old, fresh out of virginity, and assumed that, as I was at what appeared to be the epicenter of fashionable London, it was absolutely the fashionable thing to do-- to swing. Everybody, it seemed, was a swinger. For the record, I only ever participated with Pierre. Well, I would say that, wouldn't I? It was true for I did, along with dozens of other women, totally adore him and was completely in his thrall.
The gorgeous blonde at his beatnik party that night was Pam, and the other devilishly handsome lothario was a French hairdresser called Raphael de Rosa, who was in partnership with Leonard, who later became Twiggy's hairdresser. They were Raphael and Leonard until Raphael did a bunk with the taking one day. Falling in between them, quite inconspicuously, was Tony.
Pierre whisked me off from that party to my first quasi-public coupling round at Pam and Tony's. We watched a blue film, my first, then Pierre seduced me on the sofa, and Pam and Raphael bonked in the bedroom with Tony literally looking on. I don't think any doors ever closed in that flat.
Somehow, the Lennons stumbled into this den of inequity in or around March 1964. I received a phone call at about 9pm from Pierre saying he would be collecting me in 15 minutes to go to a party. We fetched up at Palace Court at the same time as the Shaws were climbing out of a car with Cynthia and John Lennon, who was already a bit sozzled. Inside, I remember Cynthia drinking only water, but John and Tony had scotch. Pierre never drank as far as I knew. I didn't like scotch, but that's all there was, so Tony put a Coca-Cola in it. Funny the things you remember and the things you forget.
Tony and John were laughing and joking, and Pat was slightly acting provocatively around the star. Pierre whispered to me that the plan was to get John Lennon in bed with Pat, and he would have to distract Cynthia. I was wondering if Pierre was going to try to get the girl, Cynthia, into a situation with him. I remember pleading with him not to leave me with Tony. I don't think that Tony was inclined towards me. He got his rocks off in other ways.
Tony produced a huge reefer. And although 37 years later, I cannot recall the conversation, it was understood that Lennon hadn't tried it before, but the cool thing to do was just to take it when it was passed to you. And so he did. I can remember thinking that Cynthia, who was very subdued, was unhappy that John wanted to smoke the dope. "Don't have any more," she said when Tony poured yet another drink for Lennon. I felt sorry for Cynthia because she plainly didn't want to be there. Hadn't, had no idea, as far as I could tell, what the others had up their sleeves.
We seemed to drift into the bedroom, and the inevitable blue film was put on the projector. In case you were wondering, we still had our clothes on, although I have a picture in my mind of Pat and a black bra and pants on the bed, talking to John. At some point, John was giggling and swaying around, and suddenly he staggered into the bathroom, which was off the bedroom, and was puking into the white enamel bath. Cynthia was quickly by his side, holding on to his juggered shoulders as he retched and heaved. It was awful.
The four of us looked on in quite bemusement. It was embarrassing to watch this huge pop phenomenon who was a god to tens of thousands of fans being a basic human being, like catching the queen on a portaloo. But we couldn't tear our eyes away. We thought, "Wow, John Lennon is sick in the bath. Imagine." They left pretty hurriedly after that, and Pierre took me home in a sulk. You know what they say about the 60s? If you remember it, you weren't there. Most of those who were there are not here today to tell it. So in that respect, I'm rather glad I wasn't.
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