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- Herausgeber: The Robson Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
Strings Attached is the much anticipated authorised biography of John Williams, one of the most accomplished and celebrated musicians of his generation. From his childhood in Australia to his stellar career in London and around the world, John Williams has lived an extraordinary life. Master of the classical repertoire, he took the guitar to a wider audience with the band SKY and by his championing of the music of South America and Africa. William Starling came to know John Williams through their mutual friend, jazz guitarist John Etheridge. As their friendship developed, he put it to the maestro that it was time for a biography. To his lasting amazement, the famously private Williams agreed. Strings Attached is the product of extensive research and uniquely privileged access to John Williams, his family, friends and musical associates. It is the first telling of the fascinating life and career of a world-renowned musician and, equally, the story of a man and the making of his identity.
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For Charles Edward Fox
Without whose art this adventure would never have happened.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all those who were so kind as to grant me interviews to help with the research for this book. Their regard, admiration and affection for John Williams made my task of persuading them to do so far easier that I could have imagined. In England, Australia and elsewhere they gave time, offered hospitality and shared their memories with generosity and patience. It was a pleasure and a privilege to meet each and every one of them and I thank them all sincerely. That many of them have become friends is a blessing and a bonus beyond the dreams of the most avaricious banker.
Sadly, some very special people who helped me with their contributions shall not read this book and I pay my humble respects to the memories of Sir John Dankworth, Matcham Skipper, Eric Sykes and Gareth Walters.
The process of actually writing a book and getting it into its final form is very different than researching it and I benefited from great generosity in this phase, too. The professionals at The Robson Press have been just that: generous, indispensable and supportive throughout.
My admiration of the redoubtable Richard Sliwa is matched by my gratitude for his generous provision of the discography included here and Tony Long, friend of many years, is due thanks, too, for accepting being put upon without complaint; he provided assistance and support when it was most needed. My daughter Anna-Marika was always available with encouragement when concentration and inspiration were in short supply and I shall never forget the help I received from Val Doonican, surely one of the nicest human beings ever to draw breath.
Most of all I thank John Williams for his generosity with time and his recollections. Without interference or demands, he has supported and encouraged me along the journey leading to this book and I value his trust, confidence and friendship enormously.
Finally, to my dear patient wife, Eila, who has developed the special discipline needed to live with a writer and stoically tolerated the disruption to our life together for the past few years, kiitoksia paljon!
PREFACE
To do justice, in a single volume, to the life of a decidedly still-active musician with a stellar fifty-year plus career behind him is a tall order. The task becomes even more daunting, however, when the subject has not been content with a linear musical life, achieving and settling for mastery of the path on which he was set as a boy. Not so for John Williams, and consequently there is not ‘just’ a story to relate but some curious questions to consider. Why, as he reached and exceeded the heights expected of him, did John Williams choose to challenge norms and expectations in repertoire and presentation? Why did he form ground-breaking, perhaps risky collaborations, commission and promote unexpected works and confound orthodoxy in the design of his chosen instrument?
Then there is what lies beyond the music. While this particular life may appear to be neatly bound around with guitar strings, there are other, metaphorical strings extending from the musical core to other, less obvious factors in John’s make-up: his lifelong humanitarian involvement, his pride in being determinedly Australian, and a bloodline that includes a Cockney cabinet-maker and a Chinese barrister. How do these and other such factors contribute to defining John Williams?
Woven through much of the above and perhaps shedding some light is the profoundly influential role of John’s charismatic father and teacher, Len, whose own eventful story sets the scene. This book reflects John’s life against Len’s and invites its reader to consider the effects of that influence, for good and ill, as it contributed to making John Williams the supremely accomplished, complex and compassionate person he was to become. Can any of John’s great achievements be attributed to his reaction to the ambition his father had for him from early childhood?
Concerned primarily as it is with the man and his making, this work has no intention of providing an exhaustive concert-by-concert, recording-by-recording account of John Williams’s musical career, a worthy aim but one that can wait for now. Rather, it tells of the life and development of a fascinating man who happens to be one of the most important musicians of his time.
William Starling Suffolk September 2012
INTRODUCTION
In the course of research for this book I have had the pleasure and privilege of meeting and interviewing members of John Williams’s family and a great number of his friends and musical associates. Almost without exception, they expressed their amazement that John had finally sanctioned the writing of his biography; they had believed it would simply never come to pass. The idea of the book was conceived over a post-concert dinner on the terrace of a restaurant on the Rhine in Cologne. It was a balmy September evening and John Williams and John Etheridge were relaxing after their enthusiastically received performance at the city’s superb Philharmonie concert hall. I lived with my family in Cologne for most of the nineties and, with my wife, Eila, I went to celebrate her birthday and to watch our friends in action at the venue where we had enjoyed so many great concerts. Eila’s day was made when the Johns dedicated their encore number to her and the icing on the cake came when John Williams gallantly presented his platform bouquet to her after the show.
The two Johns are always great company and were in that special afterglow that makes musicians such great company after a successful gig. We enjoyed badly pronounced but beautifully cooked German food, taking our time over the small glasses of Kölsch, the excellent local beer. The conversation meandered pleasantly alighting on a variety of random topics but always gently veering away from anything in danger of becoming too serious. As the sun dipped and the cabbages and kings began to wane, John Etheridge posed a regular question of me, ‘When are you going to write my life story?’ He was not expecting a sensible answer since this was a standing joke between us born of my having written odd biographical pieces for him combined with his desire for even more immortality than his formidable musical legacy will provide. The question was laughed off, as ever, but it prompted me to ask John Williams why he had never been the subject of a biography. I received the answer that I think I was expecting. Paradoxically, one of the most widely known things about John Williams is that he is a very private person. Despite his fame, worldwide following and incredible career, he eschews celebrity and is utterly devoid of any sense of ‘showbiz’ or self-promotion. Certainly, he is aware of his standing as a musician and of his role in modern music but his answer was that it would never happen.
I respected his position of course but, as we returned to England, I became more and more fixated on the idea, so just before we left the country again for a long-planned holiday, I wrote to John making a case for the biography and for me as its author. Beyond swearing that blackmail or threats of violence never came into it and there was very little in the way of coercion or duress, I shall not reveal exactly how I persuaded him. Suffice to say that the letter did the trick. John called me when I returned from my holiday, inviting me to lunch to discuss the matter further and, to my amazement, agreed not just to the notion of the book but also to co-operating with me as its author. Having done so, he embraced the idea with his characteristic, wholehearted enthusiasm. He made clear that, while he would co-operate fully, giving me interview time, access to his papers and introductions to his friends, it was totally my project. This was welcome news since I feared there was a chance that perhaps his agreement would come with the cloying condition of editorial control. As I have grown to know John better I realise what an absurd concern that was.
It is necessary to travel back some time before that Rhine encounter to record my introduction to John Williams and, for that, I am indebted both to our mutual friend John Etheridge and to an American guitar maker I have never met. I had known Etheridge for some time through encounters at various jazz clubs. He played a guitar of mine that he really took a shine to and said it was ‘Just what I need for my tour with John Williams’, a tour of which I knew nothing. The two Johns were soon to start rehearsing and he asked if I might consider selling the guitar. I declined but offered it on loan for the duration. John was not keen on the idea so that was that – at least until I thought about how I might be able to help.
I got in touch with Charles Fox, now based in Portland, Oregon, the man who had made my guitar. Although we knew nothing of each other’s existence I thought he might be interested to learn that his guitar had narrowly missed touring in the hands of a great jazz player alongside probably the best-known classical guitarist of his time and that he might choose to do something with that knowledge. When I emailed Fox I was not sure what to expect but I could never have dreamt that he would send a beautiful example of his latest revolutionary work for John to use. Anyone who knows Etheridge will be aware that he is not the person best suited to the kind of bureaucracy that goes with the importation of an expensive guitar so I was enlisted as his go-between with Charles and Denise, his wife and business partner. Between us we helped the guitar, an Ergo Noir model, make it across the world in one piece and it did not fail to delight. Etheridge loved it; it was a superb substitute for my own Fox as he toured and recorded with it. Somewhere along the way I was introduced to John Williams.
This book is a broadly chronological record of the life of the man and the musician, with rather more emphasis on the former. I knew John first as the musician but as I grew to know the man, I felt more and more strongly that a treatise on his musical career would not really tell his story. There are many other dimensions and influences that fascinate and inform alongside his life as a virtuoso musician and I set out to explore them. Even as I began, I had some sense of the importance of the influence of John’s father, Len, in the way in which John’s life unfolded and, as my research progressed, I realised that my original instinct to assess John’s life in the light of his father’s had served me well.
ONE
ROOTS
Len Williams, guitar designer and jazz guitarist.
ONE
THE MAN WHO STARTED IT ALL
Leonard Arthur Williams was a highly motivated, extremely gifted and rather idiosyncratic man. He was also an enormous influence in his son John’s life, far more so than is the case in most father–son relationships, and this was not just in terms of John’s career as a musician but also in the creation of his complex identity.
Len was an excellent musician, teacher and businessman who had scant regard for convention in any of these fields. An autodidact polymath, possessed of a formidable and inquiring intellect, enormous energy and unshakeable focus, in post-war London he championed the classic guitar and pioneered methods of tuition and technique to become one of the most influential forces in the development of the instrument. In later life, he became an authority on certain aspects of animal behaviour, publishing several books on the subject in typically uncompromising style. Commenting on Len Williams’s 1971 book, the loftily titled ‘Challenge to Survival: A Philosophy of Evolution’, his friend Gavin Maxwell (of Ring of Bright Water fame) said of him, ‘Williams writes as he talks, with acid humour and disturbing frankness. He personifies the uncompromising force of a revolutionary who combines a devastating logic with the intuitions of an artist.’
Maxwell’s choice of the word ‘revolutionary’ is highly apposite. Williams challenged or ignored received wisdom in most activities in which he was involved and had the determination and strength of character, leavened with a streak of ruthlessness, that powered him not just to follow his own path but to succeed. Len lived an adult personal life as complex and unpredictable as his career. It was undeniably a pretty bohemian existence and, in an era when divorce was far from common, he was divorced twice and married three times. He held strongly left-wing political views throughout his life that were to determine and shape many of the decisions and choices he made.
John Williams credits his father as being his best and most important teacher. Not only does he acknowledge the importance of Len’s role in his own development as a musician, valuing his contribution far above that of Andrés Segovia, the ‘father of the guitar’, but he also holds a strong conviction that Len was, by any standard, a highly influential teacher of the guitar, ‘The best of his generation’. Len was an evangelist of the classic guitar, and his mission – vocation even – to teach reached its zenith when he established the London Spanish Guitar Centre in 1952.
A proud Londoner, he was born at the home of his paternal grandparents at 250 Dalston Lane, Hackney on 11 August 1910, the first child to Art (Arthur) and Flo (Florence), née Madlin. His father, Art Williams, was the son of a very accomplished cabinetmaker, some of whose creations are still in use in the home of Len’s younger sister Marjorie, his junior by thirteen years. The family was well regarded and fairly typical of the area where they lived. One of the few things that may have set them apart was that most other couples of their class and generation would probably have had more than the two children that completed the Williams family. Following to some extent in his father’s footsteps, Art became a draftsman, designing furniture for Frank Windsor, a substantial and respected company with its premises on Cambridge Heath Road in the heart of the East End. His designs ranged from Arts and Crafts to Art Deco and Marjorie still treasures some of the beautiful drawings he produced as working references and as illustrations for the company’s sales catalogues.
Although it was far less usual for married women to go out to work in the years before the First World War than today, Flo made a modest contribution to the family exchequer by doing some dressmaking. When war broke out in 1914, she played her part for the nation by working in the royal telephone exchange where she handled calls between government officials, ministers and, she claimed, royalty. After the war the family moved the short distance to 76 Mildenhall Road in Clapton, a larger house with the additional benefit of a sizeable basement. The three-generation family home was warm and welcoming. Friends, relatives who lived close by and clients for both cabinetry and musical tuition came and went, and the place was abustle with family life. Visitors were announced by the barking of whichever dog was at the heart of the family at the time, greeting them boisterously and then being indulgently fussed over in the narrow hall. The family was always very fond of animals, something that was to result in Marjorie’s future profession as a breeder of Irish Wolfhounds and to play an important part in Len’s life, too. Their grandmother bred Chow Chows, which Len loved and enjoyed playing with, and Pomeranians, which he was disinclined to acknowledge as real dogs. Like those generations of his family before him, John grew up with animals around and remains very much a dog person; an indulged and languid lurcher is an important part of the Williams’ household today. Len and Marjorie both attended Millfields Road School, which is still in existence.
The household was not notably more musical than many of the time, but many homes had a piano as the font of entertainment and the Williams’s was no exception. Art and Flo both played, she to a much higher standard, and Flo would sometimes perform duets for the family and their friends with her sister, Belinda (Belle), who was a piano teacher. It was Belle who introduced Len to the joys and disciplines of music and she taught both Len and Marjorie to play the piano although the young girl was far less enthusiastic about it than her naturally gifted brother. Len began lessons at the age of four and evidently enjoyed them as he recalls the pain of changing teachers when he was ten from ‘dear old Aunt Belinda to a local tyrant who rapped my fingers with a ruler whenever I made a mistake’.
Len’s grandfather was more indulgent of the boy than his father, and when Art was able to find time to spend with his son, he was strict and disciplinarian – never, for example, giving the boy the benefit of letting him win a soft game of draughts or chess and berating him when he lost. One thing he did get from his father was a smoking habit that would remain with him throughout his life and contribute to his death. From his early teens Len seemed to be either smoking a cigarette or rolling the next one up; apart from those he was given or cadged, he never smoked ready-made cigarettes. Like his attachment to his grandpa, Len also felt that he received ‘more mothering’ from Aunt Belle, who gave her piano tuition at the house, than from his mother, who worked away from home as a telephonist during his formative years. The thirteen-year age gap between Len and his only sibling, Marjorie, meant that, although they were mutually supportive throughout their lives, their childhood activities did not overlap very much outside of family time and events. They were as close as their ages allowed and the teenage Len was sometimes pressed into service to push his little sister around the neighbourhood in a pram. Although he was only called upon to do this from time to time and often escaped the chore, it was a non-negotiable duty on a Sunday afternoon when the adults demanded some quiet time at home for themselves. This was a typical East End routine: Mum stayed at home and cooked the Sunday roast while the men-folk went off to enjoy a pint or two at the local. Often a child was sent to let them know when it was time to come home and they returned, hungry for the biggest meal of the week. Then everyone settled down for a lazy afternoon in preparation for the week’s work ahead.
Young Len was a good student of music who gained an excellent grounding from his lessons; he played well and had a strong grasp of musical theory but he was also a capable improviser. He was confident player whose natural gift soon soared beyond what he had been taught and, when he was just fourteen, he began earning a living by playing piano around the numerous working men’s clubs in the area. This was well-paid work and the youngster would typically receive around three shillings and six pence per gig. As one of the most influential guitarists of the twentieth century, it is interesting to note that, in interviews in later life, Len recalled with some pride: ‘I started my musical life as a jazz pianist’. He must have been pretty good because there was a lot of competition for piano jobs in those days; most families had someone who was competent on the instrument, playing for family parties and neighbourhood singsongs, and many of these pianists would welcome the chance to earn an extra few bob playing in a pub or club. This kind of work got Len noticed and a London-based Irish band recruited the sixteen-year-old to join them on piano for a tour in Belgium. This was a very big step forward for the lad, a real achievement that reinforced his determination to make a career as a musician. However, his triumphant return home from the European adventure was soured somewhat by his father’s glowering resentment that Len was now earning more than he himself was. The young man was precocious in many ways and his achievement added to the tension that always lay just below the surface of their relationship.
Never a great one for sports, music and everything that went with it more or less filled his life. On the rare occasions when he was not seeking out or playing gigs, he enjoyed a hand of cards and there were regular games in the basement of his grandparents’ house at Mildenhall Road. Pontoon and rummy were the preferred games and Len sometimes lost money he could not afford at the table.
On the musical front, Len being Len and revelling in his playing, he decided to look for an alternative to the piano that would give him an edge with finding work. He found it first in the form of a tenor banjo that came his way through fortuitous circumstances. To help the family budget, the Madlin household took the occasional lodger and one of their paying guests ‘did a moonlight flit’. In his hurry to leave he forgot to take his banjo, which Len promptly adopted. The banjo had a degree of novelty and there were far fewer players to compete with than was the case for piano so he took to studying it in earnest. Len landed a regular job with J. G. Abbott, which gave him access to the various instruments that were on sale and that he had to demonstrate. He took every opportunity to listen to recordings of American banjo players and, after a while, stumbled across a disc by the US guitarist Eddie Lang, a seminal discovery that was to turn him seriously towards the guitar. Len’s musical hero, Django Reinhardt, also graduated from the banjo to the guitar, although he started his journey into music on the violin, not the piano. Django was the gypsy guitarist often described as the greatest European jazz musician ever and he has been a source of inspiration for thousands of players. Despite throwing himself into acquiring some skill with the instrument, Len dallied with the banjo for less than a year before hearing Eddie Lang and transferring his affection to the instrument that would shape his future and become the destiny of his son, John. Williams worked hard in his efforts to master his new instrument, playing out whenever possible, grabbing every chance to show off the guitar to potential buyers for his employer and practising in every moment that circumstances allowed. In this, he had a head start because his piano playing provided him with a good grounding in musical theory. He played a steel string archtop guitar with a plectrum and sought to emulate the Eddie Lang style that had been his inspiration to take up the instrument. Lang was the model for many players of that generation and was cited as ‘the first’ by no less than Les Paul and dubbed ‘the father of jazz guitar’ by George Van Eps – few would argue.
Luck soon smiled on Len again. One truly fateful day in 1931, the great Italian luthier and guitarist Mario Maccaferri wandered into the shop and saw the young beginner practising guitar. Although Len had only been playing for around six months, the Italian was very impressed with what he saw and took the nineteen-year-old under his wing, inviting him to dinner and then offering to help. Regular lessons with Mario followed, but they were always strictly in the classical technique. Maccaferri’s solidly classical repertoire included works by Sor, Coste, Bach, Granados, Tarréga and his own teacher and mentor, Luigi Mozzani. It was from Mozzani that he had acquired his one deviation from the classical ‘Segovia style’ in that he always used a metal thumbpick, a peccadillo he happily did not impose too determinedly on his new young pupil. Maccaferri also spared Len the trials of playing a ‘harp guitar’, an unusual instrument which the Italian particularly enjoyed playing and for which he was famous. It was an ungainly device that was like a conventional guitar but with extra ‘drone strings’ added in parallel to the conventional six.
Len Williams could hardly believe his luck with the opportunity that had presented itself. He was already an accomplished and hard-working jazz guitarist and Maccaferri’s appearance in his life was precisely at a time when he was open to the new challenge of taking up the classical style of playing. He and other ‘plectrists’, including Ron Moore, Terry Usher and Louis Gallo, who plied their trade in London dance-bands and jazz clubs, had been mightily impressed by the HMV recordings of Segovia imported to the UK, and they made determined efforts to try and lay their hands on the sheet music. The teenager was in no doubt about just how incredibly fortunate he was to be learning from one of the great European masters of the instrument; Maccaferri also gave lessons to the Prince of Wales. His Royal Highness might even have used his guitar to serenade Wallis Simpson a few years later.
The highly accomplished Maccaferri was still only twenty-nine himself, but by François Charle’s account in his definitive book on Selmer Maccaferri guitars, he had studied at the Siena Academy and emerged with every possible honour before being appointed in 1926 as the first guitar teacher there. Williams was extremely impressed with Maccaferri’s playing and said, in later life, that he thought that it was as good as the recordings he had heard of Segovia. This view was no doubt coloured by a number of factors, not least that he was able to observe as well as hear the Italian playing. However, many contemporary critics compared Maccaferri extremely favourably to the Spanish maestro; Charle writes: ‘For several years, Maccaferri and Segovia were the two leading guitarists of European renown who regularly performed in concerts and recitals.’ Another Maccaferri biographer, Michael Wright, records that the Italian became friends with Segovia after they met in 1926. Len had all the ‘bad habits’ that a classical player would identify in his jazz counterpart. As well as weaning the jazzer off playing with a plectrum, Maccaferri schooled him in the ‘apoyando’ technique in which the ‘plucking finger’, after plucking a string, comes to rest on the adjacent string. This is a fundamental skill for classical and, indeed, many other fingerstyle players and contrasts with ‘tirando’, a more intuitive technique in which the plucking finger avoids contact with other strings. Apoyando is quite demanding of the player and requires serious practice and discipline. In loose translation from Spanish, apoyando means ‘resting’ and tirando means ‘free stroke’.
Segovia gave a recital in London a few months after Maccaferri’s departure from the city and Len Williams made sure of his place in the front row at his concert, from where he intently observed and absorbed everything he could about his hero’s technique and approach to his repertoire. Williams immediately confirmed that, unlike Maccaferri, the maestro did not use a thumbpick. He also picked up on hand positions both left and right, sitting poise and position and many other important points of style and performance. He made copious notes and sketches, and tried out everything he had learned as soon as he could get home to his own guitar. Len became an important teacher to his son and later to thousands of others, and it is remarkable that the fundamentals of his teaching were drawn from what he had learned of Segovia’s playing style and technique through extremely limited opportunities for observation. He acquired his knowledge only from the few occasions when he was able to watch the Spaniard in person and from listening to recordings. There were no tuition or concert DVDs or YouTube clips that could be played repeatedly and analysed frame-by-frame. Quite apart from all his other talents and achievements, Len Williams merits recognition as a highly astute and analytical observer with an exceptional memory.
Williams only ever had two musical heroes, the guitarists Andrés Segovia and Django Reinhardt, giants in the classical and jazz worlds respectively. Their music could be heard wherever the Williams family lived and it provided a soundtrack to John’s growing years. For Len, it was a matter of pride in later life to reflect that, in some modest sense, he had been a living link between the two. It is remarkable enough that Maccaferri taught Len and Segovia taught John, but the link of which Len was so proud hinges upon the Italian’s connection with Reinhardt. Mario Maccaferri’s place in the history of the guitar comes not for his playing, great as it was, but as the designer of the guitar most associated with Django, which remains the definitive instrument for ‘gypsy jazz’ guitarists. Many guitarists will be totally unaware its creator was also a feted classical player. His revolutionary design was manufactured by the Paris-based Selmer company and surviving examples of the thousand or so guitars made to his specification are highly prized and command astronomical prices.
Now playing what he called ‘jazz and straight’ guitar, Len’s capability with both improved; it was becoming his instrument of choice and he played piano less frequently. The guitar allowed him to explore new musical forms as he attempted to emulate his two heroes and, when seeking gigs, he had a great edge as one of the few guitarists around. His performances were in the jazz or dance-band style but his study was increasingly dedicated to the classical style and repertoire. He still played piano to some extent, of course, since it remained a source of income and an important part of his social life but his future clearly lay with the guitar. Music was what Len was all about at that time and he applied himself to it with his usual single-mindedness and dedication. Williams also made quite a mark on the commercial side of the UK music scene. By the tender age of twenty-four, he was firmly established as the sales manager and designer (Terry Usher was his co-designer) for Aristone, a manufacturer of high-quality guitars, mandolins and banjos. The company was headed up by managing director J. G. Abbott Sr., a luthier with a long and distinguished track record, particularly with banjos and there was support and investment from Besson, a major French musical instrument maker.
A 1934 catalogue for Aristone instruments features photographs of the three principals, the elder statesman Abbott flanked by the youthful Williams and Usher. Many musicians had to avail themselves of the easy payment facility detailed within in order to pay over time for the Aristone of their choice as these were very high-class and handmade instruments that equalled if not surpassed the big name American brands such as Gibson and Epiphone and, of course, the prices reflected this. Pre-war Aristones are now highly sought after and command large figures when they do occasionally surface for sale. The catalogue featured a range of archtop guitars that Williams had designed and which were named after him – models included the LW, the LW0, the LW1 and so on. A hand-carved spruce and maple LW3 retailed for twenty-seven pounds and six shillings, a truly princely sum. The final page of the sales brochure was devoted to the promotion of ‘Fretted Harmony – The World’s Leading Publication Dedicated to Fretted Instruments’. This periodical magazine, edited by Len Williams, promised ‘Twelve pages of instructive matter, solos, arrangements and technical articles by professional players’ and more. ‘In short … Everything of Vital Interest to the Modern Player’.
Len’s achievement in attaining this role was remarkable. Having left school at the age of thirteen, he had no further formal education to help him make his way into this impressive corporate position. On the design front, he had enjoyed the benefit of exposure to the cabinet-making skills of his grandfather working in the basement of the family home and insights into his father’s profession as a furniture draftsman. No doubt both men were available to provide advice and guidance, should the younger man have needed or been prepared to accept it. As a gig-hardened player, he knew what was required of a good guitar and he was able to analyse and marshal his experience to very good effect. John was to do something similar many years later by sharing his knowledge and suggestions with the Australian guitar-maker Greg Smallman (see Appendix B). Added to these resources were an innate entrepreneurial streak and his supreme self-confidence: he simply wanted to make his mark. Len was never driven by a desire for wealth and he was famously very generous with what money he did acquire over time.
It was not quite all music for the young Cockney, though. He was quite a ladies’ man and found plenty of time for the girls, drawn to the confident and charismatic musician who lived a pretty glamorous life by the standards of the East End. Len liked the company of women, especially those inclined to devotion to him and there were plenty of them around. But there were also other, intellectually weightier interests that increasingly intrigued and seduced the young Leonard. As was the case with many young working-class men with precocious intelligence, he was curious about many matters that tested the mind and the conscience. There was, for example, a phase when he took an interest in the occult and the paranormal. This was in the era when the so-called ‘Great Beast’, Aleister Crowley, was at the height of his notoriety and many people including Ian Fleming, intelligence agent and creator of James Bond, were dabbling in the occult. Len’s spiritual activities ranged from séances at his home (which sister Marjorie found very disturbing) to friendship and involvement with the notorious Colin Evans, famed for his apparent skills at levitation. The guitarist was present at the infamous demonstration in 1938 at Regent’s Park when Evans was photographed in mid-air.
Another diversion for the young musician was in London’s Denmark Street, known since the twenties as ‘Tin Pan Alley’. This short road, less than 150 yards long, has always been the hub of popular music in the capital. Over decades publishers, songwriters, the odd agent, instrument shops and then recordings studios kept the heritage of the street firmly based in music and it is now the home of some of the best guitar shops in Europe. It has always been somewhere for musicians to hang out and exchange gossip, news and gig prospects. In Len’s day, deals were done, the men were sorted from the boys for music jobs and it was where you went to keep in touch, a kind of musical stock exchange. Apart from these temptations, however, the place held even more attractions for Len. He used to meet up there with friends to play chess, becoming a very combative and accomplished player, and it is also where he received his introduction and grounding in philosophy. His guru was known only as ‘Old J’ and he helped Len to acquire a substantial knowledge of the works of Hegel, Kant and Croce. The thoughts of all three were to underpin his worldview for the rest of his life and he would quote them frequently, particularly Hegel, to students, friends and the world at large from then on.
Len’s music continued to occupy his evenings with both his playing and his employment as he moved on to a job with one of the world’s largest music publishers, Francis, Day and Hunter of Charing Cross Road, where he worked as a salesman and demonstrator by day. The company also sold instruments and, at that time, were the British importers of Gibson guitars made in the original factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Len sometimes borrowed one of the Francis, Day and Hunter-branded ‘FDH Special’ or ‘Style FDH’ guitars to road test at gigs.
Django Reinhardt was always an idol to Williams and he missed no opportunity to see Django and his band play during their pre-war tours of the UK. The Quintet of the Hotclub of France also featured Stéphane Grappelli, a superb violinist and Reinhardt’s greatest musical partner. Reinhardt, who was then, like Len, just twenty-eight years old, recorded and performed in a curious variety of venues, particularly during his tour of 1938. The most memorable of these might have been the London Palladium, the leading variety theatre, where the band shared top billing with the film star Tom Mix, ‘King of the Cowboys’, and his horse! Reinhardt was said to be less than impressed. He had also been irate about the audience at his earlier gig at the Empire Theatre in Wood Green and that fit of pique cost Len his only chance to meet and interview the great player. Len was there as a devoted fan but also to take advantage of his status as editor of Modern Guitar. After the performance, he and Louis Gallo went backstage to meet and talk with their hero. Unfortunately, the gypsy genius had come offstage incensed that a sizeable number of audience members had filed out while he was still in full flow. He did not know that they had probably left reluctantly but simply had to catch the last trains and buses home. All he could think was that they had shown him great disrespect. Len and Louis went round to the back of the theatre and managed to negotiate their way past the stage doorkeeper. They got as far as the dressing room but were met with a musician who was temperamental at the best of times and now, smarting from the perceived affront, would have no truck with journalists and he flatly refused to see them.
Len was becoming quite a capable classical player with a growing repertoire of Bach transcriptions and pieces by Sor under his belt, but his employment was due to his jazz and dance playing and he was kept busy on the London club and dancehall circuit. He took another ‘day job’ in the music business to work for John Alvey Turner, a renowned and highly respected musical instrument dealer. At that time the firm boasted of being an importer of ‘Italian strings’, a fairly prosaic description for goods that included violins and cellos from famous Cremona makers such as Stradivari and Guarneri.
Len had found time, alongside his music, for quite a number of girlfriends over the years and he finally settled to marry a local girl, Phyllis Pace, in a civil ceremony at St Pancras Register Office on a wet and windy 28 February 1935. He had met his new bride while he was playing, he the charismatic musician, she the adoring fan. She was a good-looking and intelligent woman, some three years younger than him, living at the time with her parents in Grange Street, Hoxton, not far from Len’s home in Mildenhall Road. His parents took to the girl and thought their son had done rather well for himself. The marriage certificate records his ‘rank or profession’ as a ‘Music Teacher’. Phyllis, the daughter of a motor engineer, has no employment status recorded. Len’s future seemed set: he had a substantial reputation not just as a musician but as a respected if rather demanding music teacher, with a pretty new wife and the energy and commitment to make a great life for them both. Fate intervened, however; just two weeks after the wedding, Adolf Hitler violated the Versailles Treaty by ordering German rearmament, an action that began a chain of events that would spread war across Europe and eventually drive the young couple to seek a more secure future Down Under. Australia beckoned.
John Williams and Sebastian Jörgensen compare notes.
TWO
WHERE GALLANT COOK FROM ALBION SAILED
Len and Phyllis left England for Australia in August 1939. It was just a couple of weeks after his twenty-ninth birthday and there was quite a party at the dockside to see the young émigrés off on their adventure. The Madlin, Williams and Pace families all turned out in number to wish the couple bon voyage, having barely recovered from a boisterous East End knees-up at a pub just round the corner from Mildenhall Road the previous evening. In the face of some competition, the couple had secured a berth on one of the last ships to carry emigrants from the UK to Australia just days before the declaration of war on Germany. It was Len who had been in the driving seat in making what would have been a difficult, somewhat uninformed and generally unpopular decision to get out of Britain before the country became embroiled in trying to stem Hitler’s territorial ambitions. Phyllis had some misgivings about the move but finally went along with her husband’s plan, although in truth she had little idea of what to expect. She was not a soft touch by any means but Len was so determined that she feared he might even go it alone, leaving her in London. This was typical manipulation by Len who, once he had set his mind to something, would use whatever tactics he thought necessary to make it happen. Neither of the couple’s families had any previous association with Australia and they had no contacts there who could have provided any assistance or advice but Len managed to persuade his employers that having some kind of connection in Australia could only be a good thing and he talked them into chipping in towards the cost of the move.
Even though Len received a contribution for the promised promotion of John Alvey Turner’s interests, he still needed to find quite a sum from his own resources. Contrary to the belief held by many, including some members of the Williams family, Len and Phyllis were not so-called ‘Ten Pound Poms’, since the heavily subsidised passage through a generous Australian government scheme did not come into being until after the war. Marjorie, Len’s younger sister, was in her mid-teens when the bombshell of her only sibling’s plan to emigrate was dropped on the family. The world was a much bigger place back then and the backdrop of the impending war added to the uncertainty of whether she would ever see her brother again. Their parents’ generation had lived through the 1914–18 war and Flo and Art were probably quite sympathetic to Len’s desire to avoid a similar experience, even though they would have been the ones back home facing any criticism of their son’s decision. After war was declared a few days later, anyone who failed to support the war effort was strongly criticised and might receive a white feather, the World War I symbol of cowardice. But there was no opposition at all to the move from his parents, rather, generous support combined with confidence that Len and his young wife would make a go of life in a different and safer setting in their new homeland. For Art’s part, he might have been happy for some respite from his go-getter son. The Pace family were not so keen but they too knew that war was looming and that their only daughter Phyllis, at least, would be well off out of it.
When the couple left, war was spreading like a contagion across Europe and Britain’s involvement seemed inevitable; conflict was now at the country’s doorstep and there is no doubt that the probability of his country declaring war on Germany was the primary reason for Len’s decision to get out and head to Australia.
Mr and Mrs Williams were not the only people driven to up sticks and leave. By coincidence, Django Reinhardt was in Britain at the time and he, too, was to change his mind about staying. He and the Quintet started their tour playing in Len’s backyard: on 1 August 1939, the band began a week-long stint at the Hackney Empire Music Hall in Mare Street, less than a mile from the Williams family home. Len went to the show, of course, but again failed to meet the great man, despite his best and fairly desperate efforts and he bitterly resigned himself to never seeing the gypsy genius again. After Hackney the musicians moved on to other dates in London and Glasgow and to make a recording at the BBC TV Studios in White City. This particular visit to London marks a milestone in the history of the band as the final audio recordings by the pre-war Quintet were laid down at the Decca studios, now long gone. The Quintet was still in England when, on 3 September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Reinhardt immediately cancelled his remaining concert obligations and rushed back across the channel with the rhythm section in tow. Stéphane Grappelli took a more pessimistic view of the prospects of the conflict for France and decided to remain in London. When asked later why he had returned to France, Django is reported as saying ‘It is better to be frightened in your own country than in another one’ which is a slightly puzzling answer as he was, in fact, Belgian by birth and, in any event, normally identified himself more through his gypsy culture than any nationality. Len Williams left England to avoid the war just a matter of days before Django Reinhardt returned to France supposedly to confront it.
Whether or not there was a genuine intention for business to be done for the London company, Len Williams’s first employment in the Antipodes was not related to his musical experience and interests at all. Somewhat surprisingly, he went to work for the Australian Air Ministry, where he secured a job as a general clerk. This role was very out of character but was driven by the urgent and basic need to put food on the table and, at least, the job with its regular and secure income gave him a base from which to seek out a more fitting employment, whatever that might prove to be. Not long after arriving, and given that no formal qualifications were required in those days, Len set himself up as a psychotherapist under the adopted name of ‘Ormerod’, an affectation which he felt bestowed more gravitas than his own. This little enterprise required no more than a lot of front, a small ad in a newspaper and the renting of an office by the hour and Williams gave ‘consultations’ in the evenings and at weekends – it seems his busking skills were not limited to music! Whatever free time he had left was devoted to getting himself known in musical circles, and the combination of his convincing manner and excellent musicianship meant he had few problems in securing guitar jobs at clubs and dancehalls.
To begin with, Leonard Williams was perfectly at home in Melbourne and he loved the Aussie character. Phyllis, however, had major reservations right from the outset and they were soon to take their toll on the couple’s relationship. She was very disappointed with what she found in Australia and the informal and casual lifestyle did not sit well with her knowing, as she did, what her family and friends were enduring back in Blighty. They heard of the harsh realities of war in Europe through news reports in the Australian media and the letters they received somewhat infrequently from family in Britain. It seems that Phyllis was far more affected by the trials of her homeland than Len. Her conscience was clearly troubled about running out and leaving Britain to its fate, and the difference in attitudes soon spelt the end for the couple’s relationship.
In reality, the Williams’s marriage was doomed from the day they left England. Phyllis’s heart had never really been in the move and she had fallen victim to the charm and guile of her husband. In the event, she was to leave Len and quit Australia before they had been there for a year. On her return to England, she immediately signed up to serve in the Women’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS), a confirmation that her motive was her regret of abandoning the UK to its fate. She had a kind and generous nature so it was no surprise that she stayed friends with Len thereafter, keeping in touch by mail from England. Phyllis soon remarried after her return home, this time choosing someone very different to Len in character and standing; her second husband was a captain in the Royal Navy. Both served throughout the war and when they were demobbed they, too, emigrated and settled in New Zealand, where they had one son. Whenever she visited England many years later, after Len’s own return there, Phyllis always made a point of looking up the family. Although she had never been part of his childhood, John had some affection for his father’s first wife and when his tours took him to New Zealand, he always enjoyed catching up with Phyllis.
Len was never shy when it came to self-promotion and his fortunes and, indeed, fame increased. Phyllis’s departure provided him with more freedom to explore and exploit the many opportunities that came his way and he took most of them. He had previously been pretty successful in making his mark in a highly competitive London that was beginning to tighten its belt in anticipation of war. How much more he flourished in a Melbourne ripe with opportunity and possessed of a more positive way of life. He carried on with his pattern of daytime employment and playing in the evenings and at weekends. By mid-1940 he was already well established in the city as a musician, his recent arrival from Europe giving him something of a cachet. He made sure that people knew he was a man who had seen Segovia and Reinhardt perform and who had played in London jazz clubs that were known and revered around the world. He secured the plum job as guitar guru and teacher with Sutton Brothers Music Store, one of the largest such companies in Australia, which satisfied the need for a steady income and gave him access to the city’s network of musicians.
Len became a popular and in-demand jazz guitarist in the clubs and dancehalls around the city and soon held the guitar chair in the much-feted ABC Dance Band, which broadcast regularly. After a time, he became ‘resident guitarist’ for the national broadcaster and, although the job was not especially lucrative, it raised his profile for the ever-increasing amount of work that was to be had as a session musician in the burgeoning recording industry. As a salesman and demonstrator in Melbourne’s biggest music shop, he met and impressed many other musicians and he was right at the heart of the city’s music scene.
Williams thrived in his new surroundings and his life began another exciting chapter when he met Melaan Ah Ket, the woman who was to become his second wife and mother of John, in a jazz club in that city. Melaan was a keen and knowledgeable jazz fan and had watched Len play many times before they got together. Like him, she was a devotee of Django Reinhardt and the music of the Quintet of the Hotclub of France was often to be heard in the Ah Ket home. But the couple had much more than a love of jazz in common: both were restless and raring to do something new. They shared radical left-wing views and actively supported various causes such as foreign aid for China and workers rights. Melaan’s younger sister, Toylaan, recalls that Len and Melaan could regularly be found at political gatherings, the Melbourne ‘Speakers’ Corner’ at Yarra Bank being a frequent and lively haunt. The couple mixed with like-minded people and were to be found in the company of some who would go on to have substantial political careers, One of them was John McClelland, a sometime friend of Toylaan, who became a star of the Labor Party and a minister in the national government. Surprisingly, given the strength of his convictions, Len was never a confident public speaker and he would not take to the soapbox, no matter how passionately he felt about the topics under discussion. It was a different matter entirely with small groups of people, particularly friends and followers, to whom he would happily hold forth at length. Len and Melaan held similar social and political views and they were both especially enamoured of the authoritarian aspects of left-wing politics that characterised China and the Soviet Union. They had absolutely no problem with the paradox of notional equality but with firm, if not stern leadership and Len would himself apply this philosophy when his chance came.
With a highly respectable job as secretary to the Chinese Consul, Melaan reflected, at least superficially, the values that her parents espoused. The Ah Kets had a social standing that was very different from Len and his family back in Hackney. She had a younger sister, Toylaan, and two brothers, William Marc (Bill) and Stanley (Stan). Her father, who died some years before she met Len, was William Ah Ket, a second generation Chinese who was very prominent in Melbourne society circles. Her mother, Gertrude, was first generation Australian of British extraction. Melaan was, like all her siblings, very intelligent and accomplished. She was also strong-willed and extremely confident. Judging her elder and more striking sister to be someone with whom she could not compete, Toylaan settled for the role that she herself describes as ‘family show-off’ and she was quite a girl about town. Toylaan remembers that, too often for her comfort, someone meeting the two girls together for the first time would remark on Melaan’s stunning looks and then throw a condescending afterthought to the younger girl, ‘And you’re pretty, too’.
Although William Ah Ket had passed on, his stamp remained firmly on the family. He was a man who throughout his life always knew what he wanted and found a way to get it, although his methods would have borne greater scrutiny than Len’s. His courtship of Melaan’s mother, Gertrude Bullock, had been conducted clandestinely due to opposition from her father who, like her mother, was of English stock and reluctant to countenance the introduction of Chinese blood into the family. Gertrude was very highly thought of in her work at a bank and when her boss learned of the romance he interceded successfully with her parents on her behalf, pointing out that Ah Ket was a man of standing and growing reputation. Gertrude herself was bold and confident enough to withstand any social buffeting that was likely to result from her love of the ambitious and successful young Chinese. It is a testament to both William’s charm and his substance that he was soon genuinely to be embraced by the family at a time when this type of inter-racial relationship was very rare and invariably viewed with disapproval. But the couple were evidently much in love and were married at Kew Methodist Church in 1911 with the blessing of both families. They made a handsome and striking couple.
The Ah Ket family were soon well established in the upper middle-class circles of the select Melbourne suburb where they were welcomed and totally at ease in both the Chinese and non-Chinese circles of society. Toylaan has continued some of her father’s work to promote the cause of Chinese Australians and particularly to document their history; they are both celebrated in the Immigration Museum in Melbourne. The Ah Ket boys worked hard and did well in their chosen professions – Bill, the elder of the two, became a physician while Stan, a solicitor, had the incredible misfortune to be killed in action in 1945 on the very last day of the war while serving in Military Intelligence in the Borneo Campaign.
William Ah Ket’s life was extraordinary. He was born to Chinese parents, a solitary son with six sisters, all seven of them arriving in a ten-year period. William attended Wangaratta High School and went up to the University of Melbourne to read Law. He was called to the Bar in 1904, the first Chinese Australian to achieve this status in Melbourne; no other Chinese barrister or solicitor was to serve in Melbourne for almost three decades. Ah Ket was popular with colleagues, clients and with the press, particularly the cartoonists of the day, who drew him as a Chinese ‘Rumpole’ character.
William Ah Ket made enormous progress in pursuing his personal philosophy of ‘building bridges between the East and the West’ but, although so much of what he did was specifically for the benefit of the Chinese community, Willie also left a memorable mark on Victorians at large as he was famously responsible for helping to bring about the legalisation of ‘poker machines’, which had been outlawed as they were deemed to be ‘games of chance’. William died, aged sixty-one, at Malvern, where he was cremated following an Anglican and Masonic funeral service.
Although Len could not be compared in any way to Willie Ah Ket, it is somewhat ironic that Gertrude was to be as disapproving and unforgiving of Melaan’s choice of partner as her parents initially had been of her own, even though her misgivings were based upon differences of class rather than of race. She was unimpressed and somewhat affronted by the confident and, by the standards of her society, upstart Londoner. The degree of maternal resistance was substantial and long-lived, and Len was made to understand that the woman who was, after some time, to become his mother-in-law was someone to be reckoned with. Gertrude had been widowed in 1936 and took her responsibilities as head of the family and protector of Willie Ah Ket’s legacy very seriously. The combination of her middle-class English conditioning as a child and her knowing how hard her husband had worked to make his way in life meant that she wanted the best for their children and she did not take to Len at all. She had issues with his attitude to life and his profession, and she held a strong conviction that her daughter could do better. The history of his flight from England and the recent divorce from Phyllis just served to compound her misgivings. There were rows about the relationship and also about Len’s attitude to some family friends. He phoned Toylaan at home, advising against her seeing her current boyfriend, and her brother Bill grabbed the phone, telling Len to keep his opinions to himself. Gertrude and Toylaan soon formed a shared view of Len as a bit of a bully and
