Peter May - Runaway

This was wealth on a scale none of us had ever encountered, and we immediately set up on the corner to start playing, in the hope of attracting some lucrative contributions. Of course, you learn from your mistakes.

The first thing we learned was that rich people treat you as if you are invisible. You simply don’t exist as anything other than a minor irritation. Had we been a string quartet playing a Bach prelude, we might have had a different reception. But Elvis and the Beatles went down like a bucket of cold sick — at least, judging from the crinkled faces and noses upturned in our direction.

The second thing we learned was that working-class porters are punctilious in sparing their wealthy clients exposure to riff-raff like us. They knew their place and were quick to tell us that we should know ours. Two top-hatted porters detached themselves from their duties at the door within a matter of minutes and told us in no uncertain terms to move on.

Rachel suggested that they might like to go forth and multiply.

And the older of the two lowered his voice, ‘If you’re not out of here in two bloody minutes, I’m calling the rozzers.’

I could see that Luke was about to embark on one of his diatribes about the freedom of the individual when our fractious gathering was interrupted by a young man wearing a tailored suit that hung on his lean frame as though he were a male model. Hair longer than conservative was, nevertheless, beautifully cut. His skin was lightly tanned, as if he had recently been abroad, and I noticed immediately his long fingers with their pale, manicured nails. He wore a light blue shirt, open at the neck, with no tie. His aftershave smelled expensive, and he had a smile to match. It was the first time that we set eyes on Dr Cliff Robert, and it is a moment I will never forget.

‘I’ll sort this out,’ he said confidently to the porters. ‘No need to cause a scene.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

The two of them retreated reluctantly towards the door, and the young man turned to us.

‘Who’s the head man here?’

There were several moments of confusion. Nothing had ever been discussed or acknowledged in regard to who should speak for the group, but all heads turned towards me and the man drew his own conclusion. He held out a hand to shake mine, and I took it uncertainly.

‘Cliff Robert,’ he said. ‘And you are...?’

‘Jack Mackay.’

‘Ah. Scottish, I’d say from the accent.’

It was an accent that seemed gauche and broad compared to his creamy public-school drawl.

‘Does the group have a name?’

‘The Shuffle,’ I said.

But he didn’t appear impressed. ‘Interesting sound. I like your vocals. But that’s for another time, maybe. Right now, how would you boys,’ he inclined his head towards Rachel, ‘and girl, like to make a few pounds?’

I glanced around the faces of my friends and saw the same trepidation in them as I felt myself. ‘Doing what?’

‘Oh, nothing very much, and it won’t take more than half an hour or so of your time. We have a documentary crew round the back of the hotel here setting up to do a bit of filming. We just need a few strategically placed bodies to prevent vehicles or pedestrians from interrupting once we’re turning over.’ He looked at us expectantly, showing beautifully white teeth behind pale lips, and a winning smile that crinkled around his blue eyes. ‘What do you say?’

A narrow, cobbled lane called Savoy Steps climbed the slope off Savoy Hill, squeezed in between the small white-stone Queen’s Chapel and a brick wall at the back of the hotel that was covered in builder’s scaffolding. A group of young men was clustered around a thickset man with a cumbersome-looking cine camera strapped to his chest. He was young, too, with an unruly mop of wavy brown hair. Various pieces of equipment lay around, and the group seemed to be involved in a debate over the words scrawled on a pile of large white cards, about eighteen inches by twelve, which were stacked up against the wall. Random words, it seemed, without any meaning. The top one read BASEMENT . The cameraman was talking to a small skinny guy who looked about sixteen. He had long, curly hair that might have been permed, and wore a dark waistcoat unbuttoned over a long-sleeved shirt. He seemed to me to be in need of a square meal.

‘Jees, Bob, I know they’re heavy, but they’ll get lighter as you drop them.’

You could tell straight away from his accent that the cameraman was American, and I felt an immediate thrill. I had never met an American before.

‘That’s alright for you, Donn,’ the kid said. ‘You don’t have to hold ’em up there.’

‘Maybe you’d like to try the camera on for size, Bob. You can bet your life it’s a damned sight heavier.’

The kid with the perm sucked in smoke from his cigarette and threw it away. ‘Just kidding, man. Let’s do this thing.’

‘Okay,’ Donn said. He turned to the others. ‘Hey, Allen, you and Neuwirth get over there by the sacks and try to look like workmen, willya?’

A large bald man with a beard and glasses, dressed up like he might have been a workie, and a thin guy with a flat cap and a stick detached themselves from the group and stood by a wooden crate on the other side of the lane, lighting cigarettes.

‘What’s going on exactly?’ I asked Cliff Robert.

‘They’re making a documentary of the UK tour,’ he said. ‘This is the opening sequence they’re shooting here. All those cards have got bits of lyrics from the new single scrawled on them. Bob’ll hold them up and drop them one by one as the words come up in the song.’

Jeff said, ‘Whose single?’

‘Bob’s, of course. It’s called ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues.’

‘Daft name for a song,’ Rachel said.

‘Bob who?’ Maurie asked.

Cliff Robert looked at us as if we all had two heads. ‘Dylan. He’s just arrived for his first tour of Britain.’

I looked again at the skinny guy with the curly hair and the haunted face as he hefted the cards up into the crook of his right arm. And was both amazed and thrilled at the same time. Bob Dylan! We were in the presence of rock royalty.

My jaw went slack. ‘Dylan and Lennon both on the same day!’

Cliff Robert frowned. ‘Lennon?’

And I told him about our encounter at the agency.

He smiled. ‘I doubt very much if that was John Lennon.’

But I didn’t have time to be disappointed. Because this really was Bob Dylan.

There were four possible approaches to the corner of Savoy Steps, and we were given our instructions to stand guard at all of them, and politely stop any people or vehicles from coming through while they were filming.

I have seen that video many times in the years since. Allen Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth hovering in the background pretending to be workers, a bored-looking Dylan standing in the foreground, right of frame, dropping the cards to match the lyrics. Well, almost. He got a little out of sync here and there.

It was a chilly, grey London morning. The video captures that, and Dylan’s sullen mood, perfectly. And all these years later I can almost believe that the world itself was black and white that day, and that it wasn’t just the film in the camera. They say it has been acknowledged as the very first modern pop video. And me and Rachel stood together at the entrance to the access tunnel under the Savoy Hotel and watched them shoot it.

Afterwards, Dylan and his entourage headed back into the hotel and one of the men paid us a tenner for our trouble.

‘Jesus’ jobbies,’ Jeff said. ‘That’s more than I earned in a week at Anderson’s.’

We made our way back up the hill to the Strand and stood debating what we should do now. A frustrating morning had ended well, but the future did not look promising.