In February of 1971 I finally surrendered my chastity to a willing young lady prepared to relieve me of the burden that had dominated my life for more years than I care to remember. However, if you think I’m going to go into the disgusting details here then you are sadly mistaken. Besides, I’ve already done that in the book so nothing to see here. Move on.
The other life-shattering event of 1971 was the fact that I finally moved out of my parent’s house and rented a flat in Catford with my school friend Terry whilst we attended our final term at college. We weren’t there for very long before I ran out of money and had to go back to Margate but it was a tantalizing whiff of freedom and an indication of what the future might hold for me should I ever try and leave Margate for pastures new. In the meantime I diligently studied and revised my college work as required, the image above showing me diligently copying Terry’s homework seeing as, try as I might, I still had absolutely no idea what the difference was between Ohm’s Law and Kunzes Law, apart from the fact that you had to be very careful how you pronounced the latter in mixed company.
I recently came across this image taken on the green next to the clock tower in Margate during my college years. We’d gather there at weekends and just shoot the shit, in some cases actually smoking it as well. Terry is to my left. The guy on the right is Les, one of the only two other students who attended the same course as us. He’s either stoned. Or dead.
Talking of getting stoned, in between the studying at college and the now overwhelmingly constant need to shag anything with a pulse, I’d discovered “Rolling Stone” magazine which I had begun to read avidly on a regular basis. One issue featured an article on Cheech and Chong, a comedy duo who had formed a nightclub act in America based around the personas of a couple of drug-wrecked hippies more interested in finding the next high than participating in the drudgery of real life. Sometime later I chanced upon a copy of their first album in a record store in Cliftonville in the bargain section, where it was being sold for one pound. No one had bought it because no one in the UK had actually heard of them apart from, apparently, little old me. I managed to scrape together the cost of the album, took it home and sat back as Cheech and Chong riffed on tracks such as “Blind Melon Chitlin”, “Trippin’ in Court”, “The Pope” and “Cruisin’ with Pedro de Pacas”. The best track of all though was the first one on side two, which was just called “Dave”. It really is a case of “you had to be there” but even after all these years it still brings a smile to my face.
The basic setup is that Dave is trying to get into his flat as soon as possible with the stash he’s just bought before the police arrest him. Dave’s flatmate, however, is so stoned he doesn’t have the wherewithal to open the door and let Dave in.
It goes something like this:
(Knock on the door)
Chong: Who is it?
Cheech: It’s me, Dave. Open up, man. I got the stuff.
(No answer. A loud frustrated sigh from Dave. Knock on the door)
Chong: Who is it?
Cheech: It’s me, Dave, man. Open up, I got the stuff.
Chong: Who?
Cheech: It’s Dave, man. Open up, I think the cops saw me come in here.
Chong: Dave?
Cheech: Yeah man, Dave.
Chong: Dave’s not here.
And ad infinitum. You get the drift. The point of all this is that before the days of social media and streaming and music piracy and such it was a given that if someone had an album they thought worth listening to they’d lend it to their friends and hope that one day it would come back relatively unmarked by scratches and cigarette or joint burns. The Cheech and Chong album was duly passed around the whole of Margate to all my friends and associated dope fiends, the end result being that for a couple of months afterwards you couldn’t knock on the door of anyone you knew without being greeted by some wiseass asking “Who is it?” If you were hip to the scene then you were required to answer “It’s Dave, man. I got the stuff” after which all parties concerned dissolved into fits of giggles at how funny we all were. After a while though, the joke started to pall somewhat to the point where I felt if one more person asked me who I was after I’d knocked on their door, I was primed to channel my inner Charlie Manson and tell the twat inside that if he didn’t open up right away I was going to kick the f***king door down and murder whoever was behind it.
This is the infamous copy of the very first Rolling Stones album I ever bought, infamous because the landlady of our flat in Catford genuinely thought for some inexplicable reason (hope maybe?) that a real penis was going to present itself after I demonstrated the working zipper. Personally, I think Mick and Andy Warhol missed a trick there.
1970 was the year I finally discovered a thing called the solo female singer. First up was “Tapestry”, an album I was eagerly awaiting as I actually knew who Carole King was, mainly down to my nerdy habit of reading the songwriting credits on all the singles I had bought up to that point. Later that year I also purchased the Aretha Franklin album, then purchased the blast from the past Ronettes record which was originally released in 1963. I picked it up from a nightclub disc jockey for a fiver. You know, sometimes I think I missed my calling.
Stay tuned for part 2 of 1971, in which I revisit some of the movies that enchanted me as a callow youth half a century ago. Another sentence I never thought I’d live long enough to ever type.
Much better than the alternative though.
Steve Mayhew 