24Oct
I first met Heathcote Williams in Windsor Castle at Ray Foulk's Millennium Debate - Ray had organised this debate and invited me to join in - it meant staying in Windsor Castle for the weekend - with great intellectuals like the poet and playwright Heathcote Williams and the pro-capitalist climate change denier Richard D. North - and my mate Steve Hurrell, the TV producer and advocate of Permaculture came with me too. So it was going to be fun. And it was passionate conversations and lengthily debated arguments in various highly ornate rooms and chambers in the Castle - and the joy of strolling the castle battlements in the evening looking over the small town, and the exultant royal history of the place! I had been there before, invited to a Reception for the Arts by Queen Elizabeth - just after the Castle fire - so I didn't take any roll-ups and was gasping for a fag. On that great night, I spotted a huddle of people smoking in the corner - so I went and begged a cigarette - it turned-out to be ciggy - and after the gig, Joanna gave Beryl and me a lift in her stretch limo back into central London;
The next time I saw Heathcote was in Prague, Czech Republic - he was starring in a film there and I was leading a class of Bulgarians and locals on behalf of the George Soros Open Society initiative - essentially spreading the word about the importance of the Internet and World-Wide Web in building open societies in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. We met in the Centre for Advanced Media in central Prague, and I was staying in an hotel with a jazz club in its basement, Heathcote in a nearby hotel.
I saw a completely other side of him there. I did not know he was a master of magic at the famous Magic Circle, whose motto is 'not apt to disclose secrets' - and he lived up to their fine reputation:
The first 'trick' I noticed was that then, in the early days of digital cameras (before smart phones) they all seemed to use little coloured low-power lasers to determine the range of their target subjects - so little dots of red or green would appear on subject's faces as their photos were being taken. I saw Heathcote appear to grab one of these red lights, and juggle it in his hands, before swallowing it and retrieve it from his ear. All this without any overt 'look at me I'm performing magic' paraphernalia... and next he offered to buy someone a drink, wriggled his way over to the bar - about 20 feet away, and came back holding his hands way above his head each side of a glass of wine - without touching it!
So Heathcote was fun, but didn't like jazz at all - He remarked one evening, while a modern-jazz track was playing 'You'd think they'd club together and get themselves a good tune' - but a few years later he sent me a song about people our age and older dancing together. it was called 'Do the Wrinkly Bop'
Heathcote - the old Etonian in the headline above, because he wanted to create a Housing Association for Squatters in London..
And in case you didn't know he wrote several fab plays and novels, beginning with AC/DC in the mid Sixties, Autogeddon and Whale Nation - and he also scrawled one or two of his book titles and other pithy comments on the railway bridges around Notting Hill too. Remember the Truth Dentist, Eat the Rich, and Nuclear Waste fades your Genes, were my grafitto favourites..
And why I mentioned The Mill in Yarmouth? Because in the Nineties and the Noughties I regularly held big birthday parties there, and in 2011 I invited Heathcote to come. Sadly it was the year he died, so we weren't able to celebrate this great genius on the Island...
Comments