London calling

Tour Overture

So, I arrived at Heathrow Airport in London, England lugging a backpack that was so heavy it was as if I were carrying the bones of my ancestors, just like that doomed, dirt-eating, bone-carrying character in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. Well, it would be swell if I were able to take my whole dysfunctional family, plus neighbors, to London – both the living and the dead. I could almost see my barber uncle who has a pair of phantasmagoric white pants (it always, always, rains when he wears them) admiring the whiteness of the Marble Arch. Or a cousin who palms his farts and then sneaks up on prospective victims and then… Or the wife of the brother of another uncle yakking and yapping away at the guards of Buckingham Palace – a woman who’d still be gossiping in her own funeral while munching green peas.

Hey, don’t be put off by this sampling of black comedy from me. Blame it on merry old England, which inspires that wry, dry, and a bit morbid sense of humor a la Salman Rushdie or Benny Hill – especially from a visitor who comes from a town that smells of fish sauce, ghost projects and dead voters. (The district I live in is altogether a joke – Bagoong fields forever.) And it was really a magical-realist thing for this proletarian who digs many things British (musicians, artists and writers, among others) to visit royal London – the city of Shakespeare and punks, of phantoms and the Rolling Stones, of princes and the Spice Girls (who were once rumored to be princes, too). Oh, to feel that regal despair on the formerly foggy and damp streets of Lon-dyn.

I went to London and I…
I booked myself in at the Y… W.C.A.
I said I like it here can I stay?
Do you have a vacancy for a back-scrubber?

I nearly booked myself at the Y because I had to make do with an ultra-tight budget. (Think a politician’s mistress’ tip to her manicurist, or what my bag of bones, flesh and hair would cost to the Victor Frankensteins of med school.) But rather than doing a Morrissey (going to London when he was “16, clumsy and shy” and staying at a hostel with Spartan amenities), I was able to get reservations at Blakemore Hotel on Leinster Garden, which turned out to be a royal hole in the wall. Imelda Marcos had a speaking engagement when I got there, so the lobby was crawling with ancient Filipinos spewing spit and politics. Talk about omens.

Riding the black cab from the airport to the city proper was out of the plan. I got burned once in Edinburgh by a cab with a meter that milked as much money as a mulcting cop, so I wasn’t planning on becoming a stupid moth again. Thus, I was forced to learn the workings of the Tube (the London underground train system, not what Boy George wore in the ’80s) even if I dreaded underground trains, which make me feel like a subterranean homesick alien. Cheap (well, relatively), very convenient and almost always on time, the Tube is the best method of getting around London – labyrinthine, yes, but not as inscrutable as the one in Tokyo. I bought whole-day tickets (the advice of a burly Scottish man at a magazine counter who was more Jane than Joe), and started the queen of all my trips.

Rock In A Nutshell

First, the digs: Blakemore Hotel was okay, although it smelled of enamel and gasoline, and the ancient TV set (probably built when Thatcher was as young as a Spice Girl) had only three channels, all BBC. No matter, I was planning on not being home anyway, being a tourist and all – even if I turned out to be more Chevy Chase than Pico Iyer. But the most remarkable thing about my room in Blakemore is that it was near a train station – Paddington, I think. A train would pass like a punctual clock cuckoo every – what? – 20 goddamn minutes. (One night I dreamt I was running on a beach into the general direction of Kate Hudson with a Whitney Houston song playing stupidly in the background… In-daaay, will always love yooh-hoooh-oo… and just when Kate and I were within arms’ reach… Woo-woo!!! Jump cut to reality: Me, shivering, deafened by locomotive sound effects, saliva everywhere, alone on the biggest bed in the world.)

Anyway, the first thing I did after I rested was – no, not to hoist pints in a pub but – book a tour of sorts. I went to Trafalgar Square, where the meeting-place for the Big Bus Rock N’ Roll walking tour was, and there I met the guide, as well as the rest of the people on the tour – which was zilch. Yeah, zero. Ian the guide said that the hour I picked (2 p.m.) was usually the time people shopped and toured like crazies. And the elderly tourists usually pick the less “noisy” ones like the Royal London Walk (where pilgrims can watch the changing of the guard), as well as Ghosts by Gaslight (where they can listen to the whistling of the ghost of Fleet Street, hear the tale of the demon barber Sweeney Todd, and get drunk on ale in a haunted tavern). Rock n’ roll is not for septuagenarians, anyway. Well, except for the Stones.

Since I got my fill of ghosts in the underground vaults in Scotland (which, believe me, is one of the scariest places on Earth), I wanted to check out the rock n’ roll landmarks. And Ian took me.

The guide had a lot of esoteric knowledge about rock n’ roll, although he didn’t look the part (he’s more Gandalf than Green Day), although I wasn’t sure if his stories were half-fact/half-factoid. He took me to a shop in Soho where Jimi Hendrix, a one-time London resident, bought a cream Fender Stratocaster. I was a little jolted to discover that Jimi once lived in an apartment (No. 23 Brook Street) next door to Handel’s (No. 25) for a year. Well, I could almost imagine Mr. Handel inviting Mr. Hendrix for tea and cakes, as well as to add some incendiary feedback on Messiah or Water Music. Or Jimi asking the kindly old composer to add symphonic flourishes on Little Wing and Axis: Bold as Love. Ah, the jam sessions in the dingy clubs of self-delusion.

We also passed by Ronnie Scott’s, the legendary jazz pub. Scott, according to Ian, played sax on The Beatles’ Lady Madonna. I’m not sure about that, though. He also said acts like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Genesis, Tom Waits played at Scott’s club, and it was at the queue for the Waits gig that Mick Jones and Joe Strummer of The Clash met each other (which I read on Uncut was not the case at all). Anyway, lore has it that Hendrix jammed with Eric Burdon and War on Sept. 16, 1970 at Ronnie Scott’s, two days before the guitarist was found dead in Samarkand Hotel in London at age 27. Man, and to think that the mediocre ones live forever and write musicals about Stonehenge, or record Invisible Touch and You Can’t Hurry Love.

We went to Denmark Street, England’s Tin Pan Alley, which was filled with specialty music shops. Bob Dylan was seen standing in one of the shops there in the movie Don’t Look Back. Legends like Bob Marley, Lou Reed and Paul Weller all shopped for guitars on that street at some point. And I read before that Hendrix and The Beatles recorded songs in basements on Denmark Street, while Elton John wrote songs on one of the rooftops.

Off we went to a road leading to the old location of Regent Sounds Studio, where the Rolling Stones recorded the group’s first album. ELP (Emerson, Lake and Palmer – not Powell, as Press once claimed) and the Kinks also laid a few tracks there. The defunct Gioconda Café was where the Sex Pistols once hung out. David Bowie slept in a camper van in one of the side streets.

St. Anne’s Church was where Paul Simon once took shelter during a sudden downpour. There, in the churchyard – where Jagger’s ex-flame Marianne Faithfull slept after doing hard drugs and goodness what – Simon wrote a song about hypocrisy called Blessed. “Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on… I have tended my own garden much too long.”

We passed by an old bar where Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin’s burly manager, used to work as a bouncer. (Remember his gangster segment in The Song Remains The Same?) We also saw a café bar where Marc Bolan of glam rock band T. Rex used to play, as well as an apartment where the Stones used to rehearse. That particular flat had a bar downstairs where Mick Jagger and Brian Jones may have jammed.

Berwick Street, I was delighted to discover from Ian, was the very street featured on the “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” album cover. The photo-shoot started at 4:30 a.m. and around 300 frames were taken by lensman Brian Cannon. The first frame ended up as the cover. Were the grim Brothers Gallagher pissed that the shoot took so long? Definitely… maybe… (Special thanks to a girl with red and gold curls for explaining to me what Wonderwall really means.)

On an unassuming street, Ian took me to Trident Studio, the place where The Beatles recorded Hey Jude and much of “The White Album.” Story has it that Paul McCartney asked the orchestra to provide handclaps and backing vocals (“Nah, nah, nah, hey Jude!”) for the epic refrain. Most of the musicians obliged, except one dude who snapped, “I’m not going to sing Paul McCartney’s bloody song.” Thus, the king dickhead of the universe lost his sad claim to immortality. Probably played a kick-ass oboe, though. Who the hell cares, anyway?

Trident Studio, on the other hand, has been rendered immortal not just by The Beatles but also by other great artists who recorded there: David Bowie (Space Oddity), Lou Reed (Walk on the Wild Side), Supertramp (Crime of the Century), Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody) and Elton John (Your Song), among others. John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra also laid down tracks at Trident, now called Sounds Studio, located in an alley so unassuming you would think it’s an Avenida cranny teeming with glue-sniffers, grease people and hundred-peso whores.

Magical Mystery Drizzly Tour

The London Walks tour for The Beatles was guided by Richard Porter, “the Pied Piper of Beatlemania.” We rats from different lands assembled at Tottenham Court Road in front of a theater with a huge Freddie Mercury statue, one drizzly morning. The tourists were around 30 (including this diehard Lennon fan), and we paid five pounds each for the trip down Penny, er, memory lane.

With Ian, I was able to check out the Prince of Wales Theater (which was under renovation at that time). It was there in ’63 that The Beatles performed in the presence of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. Lennon famously introduced Twist and Shout with the smart aleck remark: “In the cheaper seats, clap your hands. The rest of you, just rattle your jewelry.”

A stone’s throw away was the London Pavilion where A Hard Day’s Night had its premiere in ’64. I still have memories of the running, the screaming, and the general pandemonium in black and white.

Porter took us to the London Palladium, where The Beatles played a historic, chaotic gig on Oct. 13, 1963. The following day, newspapers bannered this strange affliction called “Beatlemania.” Our guide added that next door was where Lennon’s infamous interview took place wherein the Beatle said a few things about Jesus and rock n’ roll. That got Lennon crucified and almost buried by the American media. In fact, there was even a burning session of Beatles items organized by a Texas radio station, which got struck by lightning soon after. God must be a rock n’ roll fan.

The guide also took us to another club where The Beatles played so rottenly. Ringo crabbed about a particular number. “We didn’t play that one, Ringo,” another Beatle snapped. “Well, I did!” said Ringo.

We passed a public toilet where Lennon appeared as a doorman in a Dudley Moore/Peter Cook TV show called Not Only But Also. It was the first time John appeared in his granny glasses. We also traversed Carnaby Street where The Beatles, the Stones, The Who and the Mod crowd (as well as Austin Powers) bought clothes. We saw The Spirit of Soho mural, which is said to have inspired the album cover of “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” We also went to the place, which used to be the Indica Gallery, where Lennon and Yoko Ono first met.

John went to the gallery before the opening day of an exhibit titled Unfinished Paintings and Objects by a Japanese artist (Ono, of course) who created stuff like transparent houses, imaginary music and “underwear to make you laugh.” The tour guide became more animated when he told us about the genesis of the much-ballyhooed love affair. Lennon explored the “artworks” – an apple decomposing on a plate, an installation with a tiny word on it (“YES!”), etc. Yoko handed Lennon a card with the word “Breathe,” and asked him to give money in order to have the privilege of hammering an “imaginary nail.” John’s famous comeback was to pay her with “imaginary shillings.” Real love blossomed between the two. Aah, the tour guide blushed. John wrote big beautiful ballads for Yoko; Yoko screamed like a banshee in her avant-garde songs. Weeeeeeeee…

Then we hauled our flabby butts to the Apple headquarters on No. 3 Savile Row, the site of The Beatles’ last concert. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the one on the rooftop, where the group played songs like Don’t Let Me Down, Get Back, One After 909 and Dig A Pony, among other tracks from the “Let it Be” sessions, to an audience of friends, Apple cohorts, lunch-timers from West End offices, and policemen asked to stop the fracas but ended up watching the impromptu gig instead. Lennon ended the gig by saying, “I’d like to say, ‘Thank you,’ on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition.”

The audition to be in the lounge of the gods is more like it.

The other highlight of the Magical Mystery Walking Tour was a visit to Abbey Road, where John, Paul, George and Ringo were photographed walking across the zebra crossing in front of the studio.

A two-zone trip on the Tube from London’s West End, Abbey Road Studios is set in a neighborhood which evokes Peter Pan, Wendy Darling and children who fly with a little help from pixie dust. It was so suburban, so hard to believe that the most mind-altering music came from beyond its doors. Like all – as in all – the songs on “Abbey Road.” Like Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” or Radiohead’s “The Bends” and “OK Computer.” All created in an area of sculpted hedges, garden gnome statues and blue suburban skies. Even Jane’s Addiction, said Porter, laid a few tracks there at Abbey Road. I imagined the androgynous Perry Farrell in drag taking a sip of chamomile tea while working on, say, a dirge about whores, fags and freebasing.

I reserved my camera for shots of me (this rabid Beatle fan) walking the famous zebra crossing. Hmm… Barefoot, like Paul? One hand in pocket, like John Lennon? Or wearing nothing but a tube sock, just like a Red Hot Chili Pepper? I was able to twist the arm of a Japanese tourist to take my shot, and just as I held up traffic like the thousand photo-op junkies who came before me, and just as I crossed the street wearing a denim shirt like George Harrison’s… the batteries of my camera ran out. Toshiro, Akira, whatever his name was, apologized profusely.

So, I just watched the other tourists capture their Abbey Road moments on film, including Toshiro. It was a sunny day. It was so bloody perfect. I wish I had my uncle’s phantasmagoric white pants with me.

Special thanks to British Airways, Sheila Teodoro of the British Embassy, and MTV Philippines.