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Hello, I would like to try and clarify a couple of things about Ig. She
was a girlfriend of mine.
The above message reached the Reverend a couple of weeks ago. It was
written by JenS, a Cambridge friend of Roger Keith Barrett. She
is the one who introduced Iggy to the Pink Floyd founder exactly
40 years ago.
What follows is her rendition, as told exclusively to The Church of Iggy
the Inuit, and now published for the first time. Her rememberings are
only slightly edited here and there and re-arranged a bit per subject.
Some explanatory notes have been added.
Meeting Iggy
I first met Ig in the summer of 1966. I saw her again in spring 1967 at
Biba. She admired a dress I was wearing and invited me to a party that
night. From then on we used to go clubbing. She was a lovely, sweet,
funny girl and was always on the scene at gigs and events.
Biba,
where Iggy first met JenS, was without doubt the single most important
boutique of London. The shop features in the IN
Gear documentary that also has Iggy.
The first really important customer to favour Biba was Cathy McGowan,
the Ready Steady Go! presenter who (…) quickly made a new Biba dress a
staple of her weekly wardrobe for the show.
This meant that every Saturday morning ‘teenage girls from all over the
London area would race over to Abingdon Road and the piles of new,
inexpensive clothes that awaited them’.
Ig was not known as Iggy the Eskimo.
She was simply Ig or Iggy and probably picked up the nickname along the
way at school or something. I think she was a Londoner.
She was quite a lot older than us and had been around a while on the
London Club scene. She invited me once to a party with Dusty Springfield
and crew. Later she started hanging out at Granny’s (Granny
Takes A Trip, FA) and turning up at UFO.
Update 2011: It was revealed in March 2011 that Iggy is born in
December 1947, making her a bit younger than Syd Barrett. See The
Mighty Queen.
One important player in Dusty
Springfield’s crew was Vicki Heather Wickman, who managed Dusty and
co-wrote You
don’t have to say you love me that became a number one hit
in 1966. Vicky had been a booker-writer-editor-producer of the weekly Ready
Steady Go! shows for many years. Dusty Springfield herself had been
a (part-time) presenter of the RSG!-show and that is probably where she
met her future manager (Update: not quite true - they knew each
other from 1962 and even shared a flat together, see also From
Dusty till Dawn).
Wickham and her team ‘scoured the trendiest clubs looking for good
dancers and stylish dressers to showcase’. The Church has a hunch
feeling that Iggy may have been – during a certain period at least – a
regular at the RSG! Show, especially as she was spotted, in November
1966, at an RSG!-party by New Musical Express (cfr. article: Bend
It!).
It will be a ginormous work but the Church is planning to scrutinise
several Ready Steady Go! tapes from that period to see if Iggy can be
found in the public or amongst the dancers.
Iggy’s Parents
After our hypothesis that Iggy was probably not Inuit (cfr. article: Eskimono),
the Church received several mails trying to string Iggy’s features to a
certain culture. One of the countries that keep on popping up is
Singapore that was a British colony between 1824 and 1959. Here is what
JenS has to say about Iggy's heritage:
I have no idea about who her parents were. She was a war baby and may
have been Chinese. There was a large Chinese community in London at the
time. Of course Ig the Eskimo is an easy assumption to make. Anyway, I
don't think I can help any further as I never discussed it with her.
Meeting Syd
Iggy became a Floydian icon when she posed on Syd Barrett's first solo
album The Madcap Laughs, but most witnesses only describe her as one of
Syd's two-week-girlfriends. JenS acknowledges this:
I took Ig to Wetherby Mansions in January or February 1969 where she met
Syd Barrett. He was 22 and she must have been about 24, 25 years old.
The point is she was never Syd's girlfriend as in a ‘relationship’ with
him. She was only at Wetherby Mansons very briefly, a matter of two or
three weeks max.
I've not seen her since but often wondered where she is.
Syd’s Appartement
Syd painted the floor of his flat in blue and orange before The Madcap
Laughs photo shoot, but did he do that especially for the photo shoot?
I was staying with Syd between the New Year and March '69. I hadn’t seen
much of him since the summer of 1968 'til then.
Anyway, at that time, the floor was already painted blue and orange and
I remember thinking how good it looked on the Madcap album cover later
on when the album was released. I didn’t see Syd again though until
1971, so it stands to reason the floor was already done when I left.
Mick Rock wrote: "Soon after Syd moved in he painted alternating floor
boards orange and turquoise." This doesn’t imply that it was especially
done for the photo session.
In an interview for the BBC Omnibus documentary Crazy Diamond (November
2001) painter Duggie Fields said that Syd painted the floor
soon after he occupied the flat, not that it was done on purpose for the
photo shoot.
It has been assumed by Mick Rock that The Madcap Laughs photo shoot was
held in the autumn of 1969 (cfr. article:Love
In The Woods)
The floor (of Syd’s flat) was not painted prior to, or especially for,
the Madcap photo shoot, which took place in March or April of 1969 and
not October as has been suggested.
I left for the States in March 1969 and Iggy stayed on at the flat with
Syd and Duggie (Fields) and there seemed to be other dropouts around
from time to time.
Ig happened to be there still when the shoot came about, which was great
because we have such a good record of her.
and:
I introduced Iggy to Syd shortly before I left, and she was around when
I left. She wasn’t there for long and generally moved around a lot to
different friends. It’s very doubtful she was still there in October or
November 1969. She just happened to be there for Mick’s photo shoot,
which is great because she was lovely girl.
This is apparently in contradiction with Malcolm Jones who wrote in The
Making Of The Madcap Laughs:
One day in October or November I had cause to drop in at Syd's flat on
my way home to leave him a tape of the album, and what I saw gave me
quite a start. In anticipation of the photographic session for the
sleeve, Syd had painted the bare floorboards of his room orange and
purple.
JenS further comments:
I remember reading this once before and being puzzled. It would seem
he’s talking about 1969. But which tape was he leaving? The 1968
sessions or the recuts (from 1969, FA)? It would seem he’s
talking about the recut. It’s a bit confusing especially to me as the
floor was painted, definitely before Christmas 1968.
The Madcap Laughs photo session had to be in the spring of 1969,
probably it occurred the first week in March. Storm and Mick say they
can only come up with the dates of August, or even October, November.
This may have been when they came together to look at the shots for the
cover, in other words when it was known the album would definitely be
released and decisions on the cover had to be made.
Part 2 of JenS's chronicle will further delve into the legendary Madcap
Laughs photo sessions, pinpointing the date somewhere in April 1969.
Sources (other than above internet links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 141. Jones,
Malcolm: The Making Of The Madcap Laughs, Brain Damage, 2003, p.
13. Levy, Shawn: Ready Steady Go!, Broadway Books, New York,
2003, p. 112, p.194-195. Rock, Mick: Psychedelic Renegades,
Plexus, London, 2007, p. 23, p. 58.
Our thanks go to Barrett alumni Stumbling... (aka Beate S.) and
Lost In The Woods (aka Julian Palacios) from the Syd Barrett Research
Society who made this encounter possible... and to JenS for her
invaluable testimony about what really happened in those early days of
1969.
Hello, I would like to try and clarify a couple of things about Ig. She
was a girlfriend of mine.
In January or early February 1969, a mutual friend introduced Iggy to
Syd Barrett, the rock star who had left Pink Floyd. To celebrate the
fortieth birthday of this event The Holy Church of Inuit brings you an
exclusive rendition of what happened, as told by JenS, who knew Barrett
in his Cambridge and London days.
In the first part of this article When
Syd met Iggy (Pt. 1), JenS recollected how she met Iggy and how she
introduced the girl to Syd. In the second part she reconstructs the
photo shoot from The Madcap Laughs, Barrett’s first solo album.
Introduction
1. It is generally believed that The Madcap Laughs photo
sessions, by Storm Thorgerson and Mick Rock, took place in the autumn of
1969, a couple of weeks after the album was cut and a short time before
it hit the shelves of the record stores (see Stormy
Pictures).
2. It is generally believed that Iggy has only been living in
Syd’s apartment for two or three weeks maximum, during which the famous
photo sessions took place, before disappearing completely from the scene.
In our previous article JenS situates this in February or March 1969.
The problem is that there is at least a six months gap between both
dates. JenS however has some strong points favouring her theory.
Daffodils and Pontiacs
Storm Thorgerson probably shot the cover of The Madcap Laughs early in
the year because, according to JenS:
If you look at the vase of flowers next to Syd, they are daffodils. We
get those in March.
Although a valid argument it is not really tight-fitting, but JenS
continues:
The car shots (in Mick Rock’s book Psychedelic Renegades, FA)
show there are no leaves on the trees. If this were London, October
or November, there would be leaves on the ground.
Mick Rock’s photo book has got quite a lot of pictures with Syd (and
Iggy) leaning against a neglected Pontiac,
property of Syd.
The car was there at New Year, (Syd didn’t drive it) and it was there
when I left in March, with a borough sticker on it, the remains of which
show on the windscreen in the photo. If Storm and Mick are saying
October or November, was the car there all that time? I don’t know who
would know that.
The previous comment may be completely understandable for Syd Barrett
anoraks, but needs some extra explanation for the casual visitor of the
Church who doesn’t know the fabulous story of Syd’s car.
Pink Pontiac?
Tic tac Pontiac
Painter Duggie Fields recalls:
The car too has it’s own mythology. Later on I identified it as the car
used in the film of Joe
Orton’s Loot (not exact, FA), but I first saw it at
Alice Pollock and Ossie Clark’s New Year’s Eve party at the Albert Hall
a memorable event itself where both Amanda Lear and Yes (separately)
took to the stage for the first time. (Taken from: Duggie
Fields)
Ossie
Clark, once described as an ‘enigmatic,
bisexual gadabout’, textile designer (and wife) Celia
Birtwell and Alice Pollock had a boutique called Quorum.
It was a haute couture heaven for the Swinging Elite, dressing people
like Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Patti Boyd, Marian Faithfull, Jimi Hendrix,
the Jaggers and The Pink Floyd. His clothes were a reflection of the
past but with the advantages of the new (one of his creations had
discreet pockets ‘to put joints in’). In 1965 Clark was the pioneer of
the flower power look and two years later nearly all of the 2000
boutiques in London would be copying his style. Clark’s haute couture
empire crashed in the seventies; in 1996 he was murdered by his partner.
Mickey Finn, from T. Rex fame, won the Pontiac
Parisienne at the Royal Albert Hall raffle (New Year 1969). He took
possession of it but became paranoid at the unwanted attention it
attracted to himself and his fellow passengers. One day he met Syd and
they simply swapped cars (Syd had a mini).
But Syd never drove it, so it stayed parked outside the house for a
couple of months. A wheel soon went missing and the car accumulated
dust, parking tickets and legal notices. In Mick Rock’s photo book one
can see that a neighbour wrote a plea in the dust of the trunk to have
the car removed. Syd's solution was simple as bonjour: he gave
the car away to a stranger. It was seen being driven around South
Kensington soon after.
When are you going to move this? I have been trying to sweep the
street.
A couple of months after Syd (and before him, Mickey Finn) got the car
it was used in the 1970 British movie Entertaining
Mr Sloane (not Loot).
The car, with its cream red and silver interior, is featured prominently
throughout the movie. The flick is not great but the pink Pontiac gives
a shiny performance. Update
December 2009: the above paragraph has been corrected as Syd gave the
car away before the movie was made and not, as is generally
believed, the other way round. For more details: please check Anoraks
and Pontiacs.
This leaves us with another enigma. The car in the movie is pink, but
was midnight blue when Mick Rock photographed Syd with it. Although Mick
Rock seems to remember: "Syd’s car was a conspicuously bright pink
Pontiac Parisienne convertible" several colour pictures, probably taken
by Storm Thorgerson on the same day, testify against this. JenS adds:
Syd's Pontiac was blue, midnight blue as you say. I have no idea if it
was pink before that. I've only heard it was Mickey's and pink from
things I've read. I cannot imagine Syd having it resprayed or painting
it.
It remains a mystery when and why the kameleon car changed its colours
(twice), but if one looks very close at the picture above, there appears
to be a trace of 'brownish' paint under the right front light. Could
this have been its original colour?
Police label on Syd Barrett's car.
Car Sticker
Mick Rock has taken a picture of Syd sitting on the hood of his car. A
police label can be seen glued to the windshield. JenS:
Look at the date of the police sticker on Syd’s car. It seems to be
April 1969. It occurred to me that the little twigs on the ground would
come with the March winds, as this was the time of clear-cut seasons.
They are very distinctive.
Unfortunately not all can be read, part of the sticker disappears in the
inner fold of the book and the smaller letters dissolve with the
background. The following is easily distinguishable:
DANGER KEEP OFF (unreadable) THIS IS DANGEROUS
LITTER AND WILL BE REMOVED & DISPOSED OF SEVEN DAYS HENCE
Dated the ___ day of ___ 196_ Registration
No. (if any) ___ F.H. CLINCH, BOROUGH
(unreadable) AND SURVEYOR
F.H. Clinch was appointed in 1964 to the post of Borough Engineer and
Surveyor to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, an appointment
he took up on April the first, 1965. The date on the document is more
difficult to decipher, but after some tweaking it appears to be the 14th
of April 196(9). If the British police was as effective in
1969 as it is now it definitely pins The Madcap Laughs photo shoot date
between the 14th and 21st of April 1969 and not autumn as has
been said before. So the warning more than probably reads as follows:
London Borough Appointments, 1964.
Dated the 14th day of April
196 Registration No. (if any) VYP74 F.H.
CLINCH, BOROUGH ENGINEER AND SURVEYOR
The legend goes that Syd Barrett gave the car way to an admirer who
happened to like it. It is improbable to assume that the wreck stayed on
the street for six months without any police intervention.
Next week will have the final instalment of our series of JenS's memoirs.
Sources (other than internet links mentioned above) Blake,
Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 141. Green,
Jonathon: All Dressed Up, Pimlico, London, 1999, p. 79-80. Jones,
Malcolm: The Making Of The Madcap Laughs, Brain Damage, 2003, p.
13. Levy, Shawn: Ready Steady Go!, Broadway Books, New York,
2003, p. 112, p.193-195. London Borough Appointments, Official
Architecture and Planning, Vol. 27, No. 9 (September 1964), pp. 1074. Rock,
Mick: Psychedelic Renegades, Plexus, London, 2007, p. 23, p. 58.
The Church wishes to thank: Dark Globe, Sean Beaver (who watched Loot
just to make sure if the Pontiac figured in it or not), Bea Day, Rich
Hall, Julianindica and all the others who contributed to the discussion
at Late Night: The
tale of Syd's car - the movie star... JenS for her invaluable
testimony about what really happened in those early days of 1969.
Hello, I would like to try and clarify a couple of things about Ig. She
was a girlfriend of mine.
In January or early February 1969, a mutual friend introduced Iggy to
Syd Barrett, the successful rock star who had left his band Pink Floyd.
To celebrate the fortieth birthday of this event The Holy Church of
Inuit brings you an exclusive rendition of what happened, as told by
JenS, who knew Barrett from his Cambridge and London days.
In the first part of this article When
Syd met Iggy (Pt. 1), JenS recollected how she met Iggy and how she
introduced the girl to Syd. In the second part When
Syd met Iggy... (Pt. 2) the photo shoot from The Madcap Laughs,
Barrett’s first solo album, was reconstructed.
The story so far
In December 1968 Syd moved in at Wetherby Mansions, a 3 bedroom
apartment located at the Earls Court Square, with Duggie Fields and
another dropout called Jules, who left the apartment as fast as he had
get in, if he did get in at all.
Syd’s hectic LSD days at 101, Cromwell Rd. were over and his close
friends thought that this was the ideal situation for him to calm down
and to organise the rest of his life. Some money was still coming in
from The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, there was no immediate hurry
to get on the road or in the studio again and there were a couple of
months left to sort things out and to start a brilliant solo career,
based on the abandoned, and rather catastrophic, recording sessions from
the past year. (David Parker lists Syd’s last recording session on 20
July 1968, the session before that dates from 27 June 1968.)
Syd was now involved with ‘silly’ Gilly Staples, a model from Quorum,
the boutique that had given a Pontiac away at New Year 1969, won by
Mickey Finn who, on his turn, had given it to Syd. (Side note: it is the
Church’s first quintessential credo that all things Iggy are related.)
Also Gala Pinion, who had taken the third (empty) bedroom, was a steady
girlfriend and for a couple of weeks, so was Iggy. On top of these
affairs and according to Duggie Fields there were dozens of groupies
around, all the time, all over the place.
Although Syd had, in the eyes of several friends and colleagues, relaxed
a bit, others described him as a typical apathetic acid casualty. And
already a new (legally obtained) drug would replace his LSD intake:
Mandrax.
JenS’s story, as has been depicted on the Church for the past few weeks,
has re-thrown the dices somewhat. Up till now it was believed that Iggy
stayed with Syd during the autumn of 1969, at the end or after he had
finished most of The Madcap Laughs sessions.
But as Iggy was apparently around in April 1969, she may have witnessed
the fresh start of the sessions of Syd’s first solo album. Malcolm
Jones, who happened to be A&R of EMI’s brand new progressive rock label
Harvest, wrote it down as follows:
One day, late in March, 1969, I received a message that Syd Barrett had
phoned EMI's studio booking office to ask if he could go back into the
studios and start recording again.
As nobody was apparently very hot to work with Syd Barrett, Malcolm
Jones was more or less forced to produce the record himself but the
songs that were presented to him by Syd at his apartment were good
enough to start with the project. The first session in studio 3 at Abbey
Road took place on Thursday, 10 April 1969 at 7 in the evening. But
recording really started the next day when Syd recorded 3 classic tracks
in two hours time. When they stopped the session at half past midnight 6
tracks had been worked on.
This was Syd at full tilt! At this session Syd was in great form, and
very happy. No matter what people may say to the contrary, Syd was very
together, and this was his first session with the new songs.
From the last article we know that the sleeve pictures were probably
taken between the 14th and 21st of April. Shortly after that Iggy
disappeared. Did this have an effect on Syd’s recording output?
Malcolm Jones recalls how Syd wrote a ditty love song ‘Here I Go’ during
the 17 April sessions in a matter of minutes. That song happens to be
the Reverend’s favourite for many decades now and it makes the Church
wonder if it has been written with Iggy in mind.
Dark Globe
When friend and would-be photographer Mick Rock showed his pictures to
Syd, Iggy was long gone. The rock star grabbed one of the pictures and
started scratching it (although the Church wants to stress the fact, for
Freud’s sake, that he scratched around her - cf. top left picture of
this post).
Long Gone was one of the songs that were premiered on the 12th of June
1969 with David Gilmour as producer. David Gilmour and Syd Barrett were
back on speaking terms (after David had taken Syd’s place in the band
there had been some frictions). Syd and Malcolm, who lived at Earls
Court Square as well (but not in Syd's house), had been a few times to
David Gilmour’s place, just around the corner, to lend an amplifier for
The Madcap Laughs sessions and David had inquired a few times how the
sessions had been going.
Syd had been signalled backstage at a Pink Floyd show to chit chat with
the old gang and after a while David Gilmour proposed to Malcolm Jones
to produce the rest of the album with Roger Waters. Malcolm Jones did
not protest, he had enough on his plate being the boss of Harvest and
probably, although this is not mentioned in his memoirs, it would be a
nice commercial add-on as well to have two members of Syd’s original
band on the record.
Jones’s last session with Syd had been in early May and Syd had been
pissed that the next session, with David Gilmour, would only take place
a month later. But right now David and the rest of the band were busy
mixing Ummagumma.
Next to Long Gone, a haunting track about a lost love, Barrett also
premiered another song about the same theme of absence: Dark Globe. The
track has some enigmatic lines that go as follows:
I'm only a person with Eskimo chain I tattooed my brain all the way... Won't
you miss me? Wouldn't you miss me at all?
Now that we know that this song was probably written just after Iggy's
disappearance out of Syd’s life, is there a possible correlation between
both facts?
Gre(t)ta and Rusty
When Iggy left the mansion Greta and Rusty, a couple of ‘speed freaks’,
took the vacant spot for a bed. All biographies, up till now, spell
Gretta’s name wrong, according to JenS:
It should be Gretta. Double T.
Duggie Fields remembers Gretta as follows: “I didn’t want them around.
Greta did a lot of speed and was quite manic.” But JenS, who knew the
couple as well, has a different story to tell:
Rusty and Gretta were not drug-addicted. They never were. They were two
art school kids who drank too much and at a later date, probably goofed
out on Mandrax. Duggie Fields was always very together and a real
gentleman. Their chaos probably fazed him - well, waking to that every
morning would.
Rusty was a pretty good guitarist and Syd enjoyed playing with him.
Rusty and Gretta were both pretty talented in their way. Just goofing.
That more or less sums it up and is all we known from the couple,
although Duggie Fields recalls that Gretta went to the USA soon after
and was promptly put away in a Texas nuthouse. According to JenS this
didn’t happen:
Gretta didn't go to the States. Her sister Trina and I were friends and
she went. I'm not sure if Rusty and Gretta continued to visit Syd at
Wetherby Mansions or not. The two of them probably moved on and may have
visited him at a later date, during the summer… I think I read an
interview with Duggie once that said they had been at the flat at some
point, but I don't know when that was.
Update: in an exclusive interview to the Church Margaretta
Barclay absolutely denies the drug stories surrounding Rusty and her.
Please consult: Gretta
Speaks and Gretta
Speaks (Pt. 2).
It would be nice if someone could write the definitive account on the
so-called Cambridge mafia seeking fame and fortune in London, all
those people that have crossed Syd’s path at a certain time and
disappeared again, often without a trace…
The Church wants to apologise for the fact that this third instalment in
the JenS series is not the last as was promised last week. So there will
be no excuse not to come back next week to read further on.
Sources (other than internet links mentioned above):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press, London, 2007, p.129. Palacios,
Julian: Lost In The Woods, Boxtree, London, 1998, p. 241. Parker,
David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books, London, 2001, p.
134-158. Jones, Malcolm: The Making Of The Madcap Laughs,
Brain Damage, 2003, p. 3, p. 6. Willis, Tim, Madcap, Short
Books, London, 2002, p. 105.
The Church wishes to thank JenS for her invaluable testimony about what
really happened in those early days of 1969.
The Reverend’s last post was rather freewheeling and not always up to
par. For one mystical reason or another Iggy’s divine intervention
didn’t come through, possibly hindered a bit by an abundance of pints of
that black stuff that tastes so good by the gallon.
So it is time to clear things up, like the surge in that same glass,
although what remains isn’t crystal clear at all but rather a dark shade
of ruby.
As always, many thanks to JenS for spending her cybertime with the
Reverend and passing him the stories that happened 40 years ago. It is
obvious that any mistake and/or misinterpretation is entirely by the
hand of the author of this blog and not by his witness.
Gret(t)a and Rusty
The last post may have hinted that Gretta and Rusty were from Cambridge,
just like Syd and (many of) his friends. JenS specifies that they
weren’t.
You may be inferring that Rusty and Greta were from Cambridge but they
were from Suffolk and went to Colchester Art School (50 miles from
Cambridge and London respectively), and had only recently come to
London. They were not on the underground scene as such and later that
summer they left London and went to live in Devon where they then
married and settled.
Update: in an exclusive interview to the Church Margaretta
Barclay pointed out a mistake in the above quote: Gretta
Speaks (Pt. 2)
The importance is not how Greta (or Gretta) is spelled but that is
pronounced as with a double T.
Rusty and Greta, one T or two TT’s, it doesn’t really matter. Her name
was Margaretta.
And the allegations that they were speed freaks, is once again denied.
Rusty and Gretta were not drug-addicted. Greta may have done a lot of
speed, but she was not drug-addicted and as mentioned at the beginning.
They were goofing.
As Duggie Fields was Syd’s roommate it is logical that he has been
questioned a lot about what happened at Wetherby Mansions. But, and not
only according to JenS, his memories seem to have quite a few holes.
JenS already disproved the story that Gretta went to America in our last
post and now adds:
I think Duggie must have got these two sister muddled and at this time.
Trina was long gone. She went to America in January (1969) but didn’t
know Duggie particularly.
Update: in an exclusive interview to the Church Margaretta
Barclay absolutely denies the drug stories surrounding Rusty and her.
Please consult: Gretta
Speaks
Gayla Pinion
Wetherby Mansions was a three bedroom apartment and was originally
rented by Duggie Fields, Syd Barrett and Jules, a dropout who nobody
really seems to remember and who disappeared very shortly after they
moved in. After a while the vacant bedroom was given to Gayla Pinion
(top left picture) but this happened after Iggy had cleared the
place (who might have been using the spare bedroom as well). This adds
further proof to the theory, although in reality not a theory anymore,
that the photo sessions for The Madcap Laughs were held in spring, and
not in autumn. When JenS visited Syd Barrett…
…Gayla was not there. She moved in later hooking up with Syd in May or
June.
She was the one who dropped Syd off when he flew out to meet Emo (Iain
Moore) in Ibiza. They had known each other for a few years, as she was
an old school friend of Lindsay’s and used to visit them when they were
staying in Egerton Court.
When Gayla was around (after Iggy had left) Syd’s behaviour or mental
health deteriorated (let it be clear that the former does not imply that
these women actually triggered the situation) as has been stated in
several biographies, perhaps due to an excessive Mandrax intake. Some
events that happened then would fuel the many Crazy Syd legends
that were floating around during the Seventies and Eighties.
When Syd met Iggy
In the first instalment of this series JenS reported:
I took Ig to Wetherby Mansions in January or February 1969 where she met
Syd Barrett. He was 22 and she must have been about 24, 25 years old.
The Church, as churches do, turned this phrase into a slogan and the
reader may have been lured into the idea that January 1969 was the very
first time when Syd and Iggy met. But this might not have been the case
as JenS wishes to clarify:
This is a little misleading and it is unlikely that this was the first
time Syd had met Iggy. She was well known on the scene and it’s more
than likely he’d have come across her before. She was around all the
same venues as the rest of us, UFO, the Speakeasy, the Roundhouse,
Alexandra Palace. Whether he ever chatted to her or was formally
introduced in any way is unknown to me, but what I did was to take her
round to Syd’s new flat. And at the time she had nowhere to live, so she
stayed on.
Here I Go
Malcolm Jones once wrote how he witnessed that Syd Barrett could write a
song in a few minutes of time, referring to Here I Go, probably the
wittiest song ever by Syd. The Church wondered if this track, recorded
on the 17th of April 1969, was perhaps written with Iggy in mind.
This was an inside joke, albeit not a very good one.
Here I Go was a song that Syd Barrett had already home-recorded, on
acoustic guitar, in 1967, although it was then titled Boon Tune.
When The
Purple Gang were looking for a successor of their Granny Takes A
Trip-single Barrett, whose band Pink Floyd had shared the same
studio to record Arnold Layne, handed over the demo tape to Joe
Boyd.
When the gang looked for the tape it was untraceable and Joe Boyd
believed that Syd Barrett had retrieved the demo for use on the first
Pink Floyd record. To make a long (and incredibly complicated) story
short the Purple Gang Boon
Tune single project was abandoned.
Rumours went that The
Deviants stole the original tape out of the studio and at The City
Wakes festival someone said that it has been miraculously found back. It
would be nice if it could be issued on a new Syd Barrett record project
(that was also rumoured at The City Wakes).
Update 2014: The story of Here I Go & The Purple Gang can be
found on the following page: Hurricane
over London.
Also the Church’s musings about the songs Dark Globe and Long
Gone have to be taken with lots of grains of salt. We will probably
never know if Iggy was Syd’s muse, or not…
So far for the Reverend's confessions for this week, more to come at a
later stage because that pink Pontiac has given the Church the blues...
Until then, brethren and sistren, and don't do anything
that Iggy wouldn't have done!
Rejoice, dear followers of the Esqimau, as The Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit celebrates its first birthday. On the eight day of the
eighth month of the eight year of the third Millennium the Church was
born. That day two messages were posted, the first,
a very modest one, was a mere introduction that was basically written by
someone else, the second
post however told the story of the first public appearance of Iggy,
already nicknamed the Eskimo, in November 1966.
Ig, as the Church prefers to call her now, was spotted by NME on a party
in the presence of Patrick Kerr, the main choreographer of the Ready
Steady Go!-show, one hit wonders Twinkle and Adrienne Posta, Frank Allen
from the Searchers and Mick Jagger wannabee Chris Farlowe. Already then
she was about a mover and could bend it better than Wickham. (Read the
article here: Bend
It!)
It is possible that Ig was a dancer / guest / visitor at a couple of
Ready Steady Go!-shows, but the Church’s investigations have only found
circumstantial evidence of that. The Church is still trying to get hold
of some courageous witnesses who want to testify this before the Holy Igquisition.
Also present at the NME party was pop-PR-publicist Simon Hayes who may
have made the aspiring model believe that he was her agent. Up till now
The Church couldn’t trace the man although several attempts to contact
him have been made.
But this is no time for grief, let us rejoice, rejoice, as today, so
declares the Church, is Ig’s day. And celebrate we will…
In the summer of 2006 Denis Combet, professor at Brandon
University, wrote a collection of poems as a tribute to the musician
and painter Roger Keith Barrett who passed away in Cambridge on the 7th
of July 2006. The poems highlight the life of the young artist as a
nonconformist who preferred – or was forced – to withdraw from the music
world for a more humble existence.
About a year later, part of the collection was published under the title Guitars
and Dust Dancing, in the student webzine Ecclectica (site no longer
active), together with art work from Lou Visentin and music from Pascal
Mascheroni.
The poems describe fragments of Barrett’s life, his youth, his hometown,
his friends and relatives and the collection contain poems dedicated to
and inspired by David Gilmour, Gala Pinion, Lindsay Corner, Nick Mason,
Rick Wright, Roger Waters, Rosemary Breen and Winifred Barrett. And one
of them From Quetesh
to Bastet
is all about Ig.
From Quetesh to Bastet
Quetesh, Majestic.
Iggy
the Eskimo, Girl of space.
Often very alone, But
always a friend.
Star fallen from the black sky: Solar,
solitary, solstice, soloist.
Pale blue crystal dawn, pearl
wine dusk. A mauve Venus, disrobed on the silk orange milky way.
Magical
music, medieval Median, magnetic: Even in worlds where love is
impossible.
Transcended, transparent, translucent,
transitory: Life together unconditionally and forever.
And
that black cat caressing him with a glance, the night. The malefic
vision of Lucifer Sam.
Denis Combet had originally written the poetic cycle in French and when
the Reverend contacted him to get permission to publish the above the
Church also asked for the original to be published as well. It is with
great proudness that we hereafter present the original version of the
Iggy poem that, as far as we know, has never been published before… Just
another world exclusive of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit.
De Quétesh à Bastet
Quétesh, Impériale.
Iggy
l’Esquimo, Fille de l’espace.
Souvent très
seule, Mais toujours amie.
Étoile tombée du ciel noir: Solaire,
solitaire, solstice, soliste
Aube de cristal bleu pâle,
crépuscule de vin de perles. Une Vénus mauve, dénudée sur voie
lactée de soie orangée.
Musique magique, médique
médiévale, magnétique: Même dans des univers où
l’amour est impossible.
Transcendée, transparente,
translucide, transitoire: La vie ensemble sans détours et pour
toujours.
Et ce chat noir qui le caresse du regard, la nuit. La
vision maléfique de Lucifer Sam.
Originally it was planned to launch a separate website
(poemstosydbarrett.com) in 2008 containing the complete works (poems,
music and art) and to publish the cycle in book form. But due to the
high costs involved to print an art book the author is still looking for
a publisher who would be interested. For the time being the Reverend
wants to invite you all to read the poems, have a look at the artwork
and listen to the music at Ecclectica: Guitars and Dust Dancing (website
no longer active).
The Reverend wants to thank Dr. Denis Combet for his permission to
publish the Ig poems on this space. And with this final message comes an
end to the official proceedings of the first anniversary of The Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit. Let's have some booze and party! Rejoice,
rejoice, we have no choice but… to carry on… A la
prochaine, my friends, et ne fait pas ce que Iggy ne ferait pas…
Update 31 12 2013: The original Ecclectica and Poems To
Syd Barrett links no longer work. In 2011 Denis Combet allowed the
Church to upload his poems and artwork as a Flash 'pageFlip' book: Crystal
Blue Postcards.
Update 19 12 2018: As Flash will soon be a thing from the past Crystal
Blue Postcards is now available as a PDF flipbook:
Crystal Blue Postcards, exclusively for the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit.
Notes: Born in Marseille, France in 1955, Professor Denis
Combet holds a doctorate from the Universit de Nancy II. Since 1975 he
works in Canada at the University of Manitoba, the College Universitaire
de Saint-Boniface, and the University of Victoria. He is currently an
associate professor in Arts > Languages at Brandon University (Brandon,
Manitoba, Canada).
Dr. Denis Combet is (co-)author of several historical works and articles: º
Gabriel Dumont, Mémoires/Memoirs was nominated by the
Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards for the Alexander Kennedy
Isbister Award, Winnipeg 2007. º In Search for the Western
Sea/A la recherche de la mer de l’Ouest, mémoires choisis de La
Vérendrye, Selected journals of La Vérendrye was selected
by The Globe and Mail (November 24, 2001, p. D 40) among the «Best of
the year» 2001, in the category Gift-History. It was nominated by the
Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards, for five awards, and won two,
Best Design, and the Mac Williams Awards, for best Popular History book.
The above poems are the property of Denis Combet and are
protected by international copyright laws. You may not reproduce,
modify, distribute or republish materials contained on this site (either
directly or by linking) without prior written permission from the
author.
Authorised subsidiaries: The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Youtube
channel The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Facebook Fanpage
When JenS,
who may well have been the person who introduced Iggy to Syd Barrett,
told the Church that they both went to a Dusty Springfield party the
Reverend was absolutely certain that he had found a solid path to
unravel more about Iggy’s past (see: When
Syd met Iggy).
Iggy was a bit older than the Cantabrigian underground gang and had
already been active in the London club scene for a couple of years. Update:
this is not true, as we would find out later.
DJ Jeff Dexter had already noticed Ig in 1963 in The Orchid at Purley,
where she used to go clubbing until 1967. Kathy McGowan and her
RSG!-team raided the place to ‘spot for dancers to appear in her show’
(see: Where
did she go?).
In 1966 Iggy was spotted on a party at The Cromwellian that was (partly)
organised by the main choreographer of the RSG!-show. We will not go
further into that as this story has already been told on this blog
before (see: Bend
It!).
Dusty Springfield started her solo career in 1963 and was voted the Top
British Female Artist in the New Musical Express reader's poll in 1964,
1965, and 1968. She appeared a couple of times at the RSG!-show as
presenter and would, in total, appear 24 times on the show. In 1965
Springfield hosted a special Motown edition of the RSG!-show and some
while later she had her own Dusty show at the BBC.
The Church found it relevant to investigate if there really had been an
Iggy – Dusty – RSG! connection somewhere and if some witnesses still
remembered her.
The first person to get in touch with the Church was Douggie
Reece, bass player (and singer) of The
Echoes, Dusty Springfield’s backing band (watch him singing Mockingbird
with Dusty). It was Reece who contacted the Reverend after the Church
had asked amongst fan-circles if anyone could remember Ig being in and
around the Dusty Springfield scene.
I don't remember her at all. Or the Dusty Springfield scene. I
spent most of the 60's with Dusty maybe I went out to get some
cigarettes or something and missed the whole occasion!!! LOL Douggie
xx
Although it was suggested that it would be a nice name for a tribute
band there has apparently never been a Dusty Springfield scene to
begin with as far as Douggie Reece remembers, if Ig did ever meet Dusty
it may have been purely coincidental.
Another Dusty connoisseur advised the Church to contact Vicki
Wickham. Vicki and Dusty had been friends
since 1962 and even shared a flat at London's Westbourne Grove. After a
brief stint on the radio (as a secretary) Vicki was hired by Ready
Steady Go! as talent manager and producer. When Dusty told her friend
she had heard a nice Italian song at the SanRemo festival Wickham
(co-)translated the tune into English and named it You Don’t Have To
Say You Love Me. It would become Dusty’s first number one hit (1966)
and was covered quite a few times by other artists, including Elvis
Presley (1970, #1 at Billboard Country & Western and #11 at Billboard
Top 100) and Guys’n Dolls (#5, UK, 1976). In total more than 80 million
copies of the song have been sold worldwide.
After her RSG!-days Wickham moved to America and although she didn’t
have a clue how to do it she successfully managed Patti LaBelle, Nona
Hendrix, Marc Almond, Morrissey, Holly Johnson and of course, her
long-life-friend Dusty Springfield.
It took the Church quite a while to trace Vicki Wickham, and after a
trail of bounced faxes and mails, the Reverend wrote a letter in the
good old-fashioned way. It pleases the Church a great deal that Vicki
Wickham cared to reply:
I am the last person to ask about anything from the 60s 'cos mostly I
don't remember! But definitely do not remember this girl. Can't
help. Best. Vicki Wickham
At least we can now say with a certain certitude that Iggy did not
belong to the inner circle of Ready Steady Go! but this does not mean
that she never has been at the show. The crew of RSG! visited dance
halls to recruit good looking youngsters for the audience and organised
dance and singing contests where the participants could win ‘passports’
to the show. In the few years that the show existed thousands of people
passed through the temple of the mods and Ig may well have been one of
them.
Authorised subsidiaries:
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Youtube
channel The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Facebook Fanpage The
Holy Chuch of Iggy the Inuit on Twitter
Yesterday (5th of February 2010) Mark
Blake (Pigs Might Fly, Mojo Magazine) messaged the Reverend with the
following cryptic message:
We've received a very interesting letter about the elusive Iggy. Wanted
you to be the first to know! More news to follow.
Of course the Church immediately contacted the journalist and this is
what the Church is allowed to disclose today:
An old acquaintance of Iggy's emailed (Mojo magazine) and shared some
info. She is alive and well and living in southern England. She
has chosen to remain anonymous all these years.
More information will probably be published in the next issue(s) of Mojo
and, of course, the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit.
(Many thanks to Mark Blake who we are eternally thankful for breaking
the news to the Church.)
In the interview that Iggy - or should we say Evelyn - gave after
nearly 40 years of silence in The
Croydon Guardian she remembers how she helped Syd to paint the
floorboards that would give an extra psychedelic feel to The Madcap
Laughs cover picture.
When Mick turned up to take the photos I helped paint the floor boards
for the shoot, I was covered in paint, I still remember the smell of it.
But Iggy, as we will keep on calling her, isn’t the only one
remembering. Also present were Rusty and Margaretta, better known as
Gretta:
I remember that Iggy was involved with the floor painting project and
that she had paint all over her during the floor painting time but I was
not involved with the painting of the floor.
Several biographies, including Julian Palacios’s Lost In The
Woods (p.241), Tim Willis’s Madcap (p.106) and Mark
Blake’s Pigs Might Fly (p. 141) describe Greta (sic) and
her companion Rusty as homeless ‘speed freaks’. This description almost
certainly comes from painter Duggie Fields who shared the flat with Syd
and who wasn’t very amused with the many people Syd invited to say the
least.
Julian Palacios remembers Duggie Fields from an interview he did in 1996:
He was so cool. Reserved and wary at first, then about halfway through
he became super raconteur. (email to FA, 10 February 2010).
This lead to the following paragraph in the Lost In The Woods
biography:
Duggie Fields recalls a steady stream of visitors, ‘some visitors were
parasites and some were confused in their drug use, not even abusing
drugs’. (...)
‘Rusty and Greta were homeless when they came to stay here,’ explains
Fields. ‘Greta became good friends with Jenny Spires, and came into
Syd’s life from that connection. They were in my life to a degree but I
didn’t want them around. (…) They probably brought stimulants for Syd
and he took them.’
Now, for the first time in over 40 years Margaretta Barclay has
decided to share her memories with the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit as
well. But lets starts by setting the record straight:
Your blog relating to Syd Barrett mentions that Rusty and I were drug
addicted. This is most certainly not true and an old friend of
ours - Jenny Spires has made that fact known to you.
My sister Catriona (Trina) and I met Jenny Spires during the mid 1960’s
at a London grooming school. Jenny introduced my sister and I to Syd at
101 Cromwell Rd and at Edgerton Court. Rusty was not with us at that
time.
Rusty and I were not in the ‘steady stream of visitors’. In 1970 we were
in Suffolk at the beginning of that year and Devon for the remainder of
it. Not in London. We were not homeless either. Rusty and I left London
for various reasons but primarily because I was expecting my first child.
Syd was a very dear friend of ours and we did a considerable amount
together in the 60's. Contrary to what I have read, we did not provide
Syd with drugs.
It was of course 40 years ago when Barrett recorded The Madcap Laughs
and memories may have played tricks on people. A famous example is the
Mick Rock statement that Syd Barrett's car was bright pink while the
pictures taken by him on that day show that the car was actually dark
blue. On the DVD The Pink Floyd & Syd Barrett Story Duggie
Fields remembers how Syd painted the floor boards of his flat.
Although the story is rather funny we now know that the actual truth may
have been somewhat different. Similar Syd Barrett myths or legends have
been created (and repeated in books and magazines) that way throughout
the years without veryfying. Margaretta continues:
Without wishing to be vindictive where Duggie Fields and his interviews
are concerned, surely, in order to obtain a balanced view of Syd’s
chosen circle of friends, it would be sensible to back up assumptions
with fact.
Syd was a highly sensitive, almost delicate person, who was well aware
of his constitution where drugs were concerned and perfectly capable of
not being cajoled in to anything he did not want to do. To my knowledge,
he did not take vast quantities of drugs.
He enjoyed our company and invited us to stay at Wetherby Mansions where
we shared good times together. Iggy was around at that time too and I
remember her helping to paint the room in question. Dominique A., a
French friend of ours, was also close to Syd at this time. Jenny,
Catriona and I lived with her in Chelsea for a time.
Update: the Church managed to contact Dominique A. but she
refused to talk about the past.
According to Margaretta the legends surrounding Syd Barrett contain many
errors and “if they relate to my sister Catriona, Rusty and me, it is my
duty to ensure that they are not perpetuated”.
It is convenient to point a finger at others in order to explain Syd’s
behavioural patterns. Syd behaved in his inimitable way long before he
met us.
Duggie did not socialise with us as a group – and his conclusion that I
indulged in such a way - and on my own, is erroneous.
From our point of view Syd was a vulnerable person, we cared for him and
our aim was to encourage him to be creative, to write and play his
guitar. After all, Rusty only wanted to write and play music with Syd -
to give him drugs was not on our agenda; Syd - was ‘far out’ enough
without them.
The Reverend was of course anxious to know what kind of music Rusty and
Syd played together:
Rusty and Syd played Syd’s songs and variations on them ’Oh baby my
hairs on end about you’, ‘Octopus’ etc…, as well as songs they created
together and basic blues.
Syd Barrett with Gretta Barclay.
In 1969 we went to Isle of Wight Festival together and at one point, in
an effort to encourage Syd to play his guitar, we took him to stay with
a musician friend of ours in Wales. Gala may remember the journey.
There have indeed been rumours of Syd Barrett visiting the Isle
of Wight festival before and a (much discussed) picture of this
event does exist. Margaretta is formal that the photograph is genuine:
The Isle of Wight picture is definitely of Syd with me beside him. (She
is the woman at his left side, FA.)
Back to Rusty and Gretta. Hoping that the visit would inspire and
encourage Syd to return to the musical ‘land of the living’ they took
him to a ‘brilliant musician’ who lived in Solva, Haverfordwest, Dyfed: Meic
Stevens.
(Update: The next paragraph is totally wrong as the Welsh
musician in question iwas Meic Stevens, not Mike Stevens
(although Meic has also been credited as Mike, early in
his career). But as this Mike Stevens's family was so kind to contact
the Church and as his music is really groovy, the Reverend has decided
not to delete it. See: Gretta
Speaks (Pt. 2))
It is believed that this musician was Mike Stevens from the Welsh
band The Shevells (aka The Welsh Conquerors). In the mid sixties the
band recorded several records featuring Stevens on guitar and vocals.
Around 1966, as Mike Stevens & The Shevells, they recorded a cover
version of Cathy's Clown and the Go-Go
Train and as The Shevelles, Come
On Home. Stevens was an on/off member of the band as he was
apparently also involved in The Squires, originally Tom Jones’s back up
band and the composers of the hit It's Not Unusual. (Information taken
from Answers.com,
the Church is currently trying to contact M. Stevens.)
In a soon to be published, revised and updated, 2010 edition of Julian
Palacios’s biography Lost
In The Woods the roles of Gretta and Rusty in Syd Barrett’s life
have already been changed for the better. Palacios writes:
Life at home edged further toward the chaotic when Rusty and Greta,
casual friends of Barrett’s, moved in. (…) Only recently arrived in
London, not on the ‘underground scene’, they later left for Devon, where
they married and settled. Greta may have done speed, but the pair were
not the terrible people they have been painted as.
When Rusty B. split with Greta, he came and stayed with Jack Monck and
Jenny (Spires). In late 1972, Jack and Rusty started a new band, Rocks
Off.
(Above quotes from 'Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd' by Julian
Palacios - Plexus Books, May September 2010 edition.)
Gretta Barclay remarried, is a proud mother and an even prouder
grandmother, and according to her family ‘she is a wonderful amazing
beautiful lady who has 3 children who love her very much’.
The Reverend can only agree with that. Even for the Church there are
more important things in life than chasing the shadow of a girl who
lived for a while in a house were someone, apparently famous, lived as
well…
The second part of the interview will be published in the weeks to come.
The Church wishes to thank: Margaretta Barclay for her invaluable
testimony about what really happened in those early days of 1969. Julian
Palacios for additional information.
Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above): Blake,
Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press, London, 2007, p.141. Fields,
Duggie interview in: The Pink Floyd & Syd Barrett Story, DVD
UK Ltd 2005. Palacios, Julian: Lost In The Woods, Boxtree,
London, 1998, p. 241. Willis, Tim, Madcap, Short Books,
London, 2002, p. 106.
In a previous
post the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit published an interview with
Margaretta Barclay, her first in 40 years, remembering the Syd Barrett
days of 1969.
Margaretta (Gretta), her boyfriend Rusty, JenS,
Iggy and the French Dominique were regular visitors at Wetherby
Mansions, the flat where Syd Barrett lived. Some stories, legends and
rumours surrounding Syd can be traced back to painter Duggie Fields, who
still lives in the flat he co-rented with Syd and Jules (nobody seems to
remember Jules, apparently he disappeared already after a couple of
days).
Syd was a very dear friend of ours and we did a considerable amount
together in the 60's.
He was a highly sensitive, almost delicate
person, who was well aware of his constitution where drugs were
concerned and perfectly capable of not being cajoled in to anything he
did not want to do. To my knowledge, he did not take vast quantities of
drugs.
Iggy
This could be correct. Early 1969 Syd Barrett was very well together, at
least compared to the year before where he – if one may believe those
unverifiable rumours again – even added heroin to his daily stash of
hash and mandrax. Recovering his sanity was one thing, tidying up his
love life another. Tim Willis (in Madcap) writes:
While keeping Gala (Pinion, who moved in at the spare room,
FA) as his serious girlfriend and Gilly Staples as a girlfriend
Barrett began an affair with Iggy the Eskimo.
Iggy (or Evelyn) seems to hint this as well in the reluctant interview
she gave to The
Croydon Guardian:
Syd was so beautiful looking. We had a relationship, I lived with
him for a while.
But not everybody seems to be certain of this. Duggie Fields told so in
various biographies. And to the Church JenS and some anonymous witnesses
maintain that Ig and Syd were never an item. Perhaps Gretta Barclay can
shed a light on this?
I would not say that Syd and Iggy were girlfriend and boyfriend. She was
his ‘chosen’ model for the Madcap Laughs Album cover. Whatever
may have occurred between Syd and Iggy was kept to themselves. Neither
was Ig the person to stay long at on place. Iggy moved about and
stayed with all sorts of people in all sorts of places without declaring
her intention to do so. To my knowledge there was no ‘when Iggy left
Syd’ moment. We were all free spirits then, who moved whenever and
wherever a whim took us.
There is an intriguing paragraph in Mick
Rock's Psychedelic Renegades book. When the photographer visits Syd
to show him the pictures of The Madcap Laughs photo shoot Iggy is no
longer there.
Once I’d developed the film, I went round to show Syd the pictures. He
took this
one opposite and scratched some lines and his name to it. I think
there was a bit of negativity towards Iggy. He just started scratching
the print, with a big grin on his face. There was that other side to Syd
which could be a bit mean and malicious, especially towards women, and
this was one occasion when I saw that.
Iggy by Mick Rock.
The Church has always found this comment from Mick Rock a bit over the
top (but the Church has been wrong on more occasions). A while later
Margaretta Barclay received one of the original Mick Rock pictures that
were lying in Syd’s room.
This picture of Iggy was given to me by Syd but for some unknown reason
she had been torn off it.
This is the second documented case where we learn that Syd had taken ‘care’
of an Iggy photo after her departure.
Since a couple of weeks we know Iggy’s real name: Evelyn. Jeff Dexter,
Anthony Stern nor JenS ever knew her real name. How about Margaretta?
Iggy was ‘Iggy’ for me also.
Last year the Church tried to pinpoint the date of The Madcap Laughs
photo shoot. With JenS’s help and after blowing up the photo of the ‘dangerous
litter’ sticker on Syd Barrett’s Pontiac the Church concluded that
the pictures had probably been taken shortly after the 14th of April,
but before the 21st, as the sticker only gave a 7 days notice to get rid
of the car. But Gretta disagrees:
The ‘Madcap’ photo shoot dates are probably incorrect as I have a
postcard from a friend addressed to me, Rusty, Syd and Iggy at the
Wetherby Mansion address dated June 1969.
Raquel Welsh and Ringo Starr.
The Magic Christian
Around about that time we did some film extra work for The Magic
Christian. I have a feeling Iggy came with us? But I cannot confirm this.
The
Magic Christian is a quite nice satirical (but very sixty-nine-ish)
movie, starring Ringo Starr and Peter Sellers and a bunch of
(uncredited) 60-ies icons: Christopher Lee (as – what else – a vampire),
John Le Mesurier, Peter Graves, Raquel Welsh (as priestess of the whip),
Richard Attenborough, Roman Polanski, Spike Milligan and Yul Brynner (as
a transvestite cabaret singer). Fans will also notice the presence of
John Cleese and Graham Chapman who independently wrote scenes for the
movie (and before they teamed up as Monty Python members).
The movie’s main message is that everything can be bought for money and
has scenes of Peter Sellers, an eccentric billionaire, smearing beluga
caviar over his face in a posh restaurant or cutting up a Rembrandt
painting because he is only interested in the nose. His final trick
(minus one) is to make people dive into a big tub filled with blood,
urine and excrements to fish the thousands of pounds that float in it
(although by all means gross this scene is not so far from what has been
shown in some Endemol TV game shows for the last couple of years).
Update: Margaretta and (perhaps) Iggy weren't the only Wetherby-visitors
who got involved with the movie. JenS commented, after reading this
entry:
I was also an extra in the Magic Christian, I was one of Raquel's slave
girls in the Galleon scene, but fortunately taken out in the cutting
room, however this tiny scene took two days to shoot. I had done my
piece the previous year, in 1968! It was interesting for me to see the
others had done some for it in June 69. Films do take a long time in
production! (mail to FA, 29th of April 2010)
But according to the BFI
work on the movie started on the 24th of February 1969 and ended on the
14th of May. This still quite fits the dates we have been proposing for
the photo shoot, but the testimony from Gretta that Ig was still around
in June is intriguing to say the least and will have to be further
investigated..
Meic Stevens.
Meic Stevens
In the first part of this series it was told how Gretta, Rusty, Syd and
Gala Pinion visited a brilliant musician who lived in Solva,
Haverfordwest, Dyfed. The Church wrongly assessed it was a certain Mike
Stevens and found some very scarce information on him.
It took not long before several churchgoers made it clear to the
Reverend that the Welsh singer-songwriter in question is better known as Meic
Mortimer Stevens.
Meic Stevens was discovered by DJ Jimmy ‘Jim‘ll Fix It’ Savile, who saw
him performing in a Manchester folk club in 1965. It is believed that he
was a session man on several recordings (Gary Farr springs to mind) and
he may have issued a solo single for Decca, but without success.
In 1967 Stevens left ‘England’ and retreated to his home village of
Solva and started to write and record songs in Welsh. From 1967 till
1969 several EPs were issued, first under the name Mike Stevens, later
Meic Stevens. (These ultra rare EPs that according to Record Collector
are searched for against exorbitant prices have been re-issued on CD by Sunbeam
records.)
Outlander (1970), Meic Stevens.
In 1970 Meic Stevens made an English mildly psychedelic rock & folk
album – Outlander - for Warner Bros. On several of its tunes it is
pretty clear why he was nicknamed the Welsh Bob Dylan (acoustic guitar
and mouth organ included), although the first and by far the most
powerful track of that album - Rowena - reminds the Reverend of a Roy
Harper in the midst of one of his legendary fits. Obligatory to the
spirit of those days there are some tabla and sitar inspired pieces as
well. Amongst the people involved on that album are Ian ‘Sammy’ Samwell
(a Shadow before Cliff Richard(s) came into the picture and later
manager of the folk-rock band America) and all-round session guitarist
Bernie Holland (but as far as we know, no Syd Barrett).
The record didn’t sell as hoped, but of course - and this isn’t meant as
a pejorative comment - Meic Stevens was fishing in about the same pond
as Kevin Ayers, Michael Chapman, Donovan, Roy Harper and of course Syd
Barrett himself.
It has come to the Church’s ears that Meic Stevens visited Syd on
several occasions at Wetherby Mansions and that he 'recalls the bare
room with one Telecaster and little else'.
Update: Prydwyn was so kind to translate the Syd Barrett related
parts of Meic Stevens Welsh autobiography into English: Meic
meets Syd. A photograph of Meic Stevens with Syd Barrett (and
perhaps Rusty and Gretta) has also surfaced.
Rusty Burnhill.
Rusty
In an old post we had JenS talking about her friends Gretta and Rusty.
However there is a mistake in the following quote:
You may be inferring that Rusty and Greta were from Cambridge but they
were from Suffolk and went to Colchester Art School (50 miles from
Cambridge and London respectively), and had only recently come to London.
Margaretta clarifies:
Rusty did not go to Colchester art School, he went to Ipswich Art
School. His parents eventually moved to Cambridge and he considered it
his base from that point on.
After a while Rusty and Margaretta went separate ways. Rusty apparently
traveled a lot before settling down on a North Frisian island (Germany)
from 1978 till 1993. After a brief stay in a village in the North of
Germany, where he participated in a few art exhibitions, he moved to a
Hamburg suburb and it is believed he is living there since 1995.
Update: the Church managed to contact Mr. Burnhill, but he
refused to talk about the past. Update 2016 11 26: RIP
Rusty Burnhill
Syd
We leave the final words to Margaretta Barclay:
I feel that Syd has, in the main, been portrayed wrongly as a drug
orientated and mentally deranged musician.
My impression of Syd
was that he was an intelligent, finely tuned artist and extremely
sensitive artist who could not stand the pressure of the attention his
unique talents attracted.
If he locked himself in his room for
days on end, he was entitled to do so - he certainly was not mad - he
did it to preserve his 'genius sanity' and maybe that is why the album
is titled the Madcap Laughs.
A word of the editor
The posts at The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit are not read by a lot of
people. The topics presented here only trigger a small niche market, to
use the marketing vernacular of today and the blog’s harebrained title
may not really invite readers to click.
The amount of people consulting each topic will lie closer to 100 than
to 500 (and these are totals, not clicks per day). But quantity doesn’t
matter, quality does.
It is clear that The Church is consulted, not only by hardcore Syd fans,
but also by newspaper and music magazine journalists and authors of Syd
Barrett related books that have appeared in the past, that will appear
in the (near) future and even some that are still on the author’s laptop.
Furthermore, several people whose name and fame have been discussed here
(and recently in other places) have visited the Church, so tells us The
Holy Igquisition.
And perhaps, one day, some of them will agree to see their story
published here as well.
So long my sistren and brethren, and don’t do anything
that Iggy wouldn’t have done!
The Church wishes to thank: Margaretta Barclay for her invaluable
testimony about what really happened in those early days of 1969. JenS.
Anonymous.
Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above): Rock,
Mick: Psychedelic Renegades, Plexus, London, 2007, p. 20. Willis,
Tim: Madcap, Short Books, London, 2002, p. 107.
Tranquillity is slowly descending upon the Holy Church of Inuit like
smog upon Victorian London. Several brethren and sistren
of the Church, and one-time visitors who entered through the front gate
to study its baroque interior, have passed some valid information to the
Reverend and these will be further investigated in the future. The
Reverend also wants to apologise to the people that have been contacted
(and interviewed) last year, especially those associated with The
Cromwellian club. The articles about The Crom have been postponed due to
the unexpected result the Mojo Syd Barrett article created, but they
will - one day - hopefully appear.
To all our readers: please keep on going on giving the Church
information, how futile it may be, but remember that the Reverend will
not break its own rules that stay unchanged even now that Iggy (Evelyn)
has been found. Especially now that Iggy (Evelyn) has been found.
The Reverend is not a souvenir collector who will ring at her bell like
all those so-called (and in the Reverend's eyes: messed up) true fans
used to do at Syd Barrett’s door. Evelyn's wish to be left in peace is
and will be unconditionally granted. The same goes for other witnesses
of the Barrett era, the Church will send them a nice note from time to
time, as a reminder of its presence, but will not break their privacy.
Some will call this bad journalism but the Church is not dependent from
sold issues and follows a strict deontological code.
Croydon Guardian
On the thirteenth of February of this year The Croydon Guardian
published a short, hastily noted down, interview with (a quite
reluctant) Iggy, titled: Croydon
Guardian tracks down elusive rock star muse. Here it is in full
(with some comments from the Reverend):
Croydon Guardian tracks down elusive rock star muse By Kirsty
Whalley
An iconic model who stole Syd Barrett’s heart in the 1960s has been
found after three decades of anonymity. Known only as Iggy, the
enigmatic woman was immortalised posing naked for the Pink Floyd star’s
solo album, Madcap Laughs. She disappeared in the late 1970s and has
been living in West Sussex, oblivious to her iconic status. In September
2008, the Croydon Guardian appealed for information about the model and,
more than a year later, we managed to track her down.
The story of how the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit convinced The Croydon
Guardian to assign some place in its columns for the Iggy enigma can be
found at Where
did she go? and (I've
got my) Mojo (working...).
She inspired artist Anthony Stern, who filmed her dancing in Battersea
Park and also took striking photographs of her on a houseboat in
Chelsea. They were released at the City Wakes festival – a tribute to
Syd Barrett – in October 2008, in Cambridge.
The above has of course been extendedly covered by the Church as well: Anthony
Stern.
Mr Stern said: “Iggy was my muse. I met her at a Hendrix gig at the
Speakeasy. She entirely captures the spirit of the Sixties, living for
the moment, carefree.”
Jimi
Hendrix gigged quite a few times at The
Speakeasy and was spotted there on other occasions as well, for
instance on the 22nd of February when he attended a press conference for The
Soft Machine.
Jimi Hendrix
The club has been described in the (excellent) London Live book
from Tony Bacon as follows (most information about the club has been
taken from that book).
When The Speakeasy was opened by Roy Flynn around the end of 1966 in
Margaret Street, just north of Soho, the rock elite soon discovered a
handy new watering hole, a prime early-hours jamming post, and an
altogether useful hanging-out kind of place.
By May 1967 the club was part of the London spot-the-celebrity
circle next to - amongst others - the Scotch (of St. James) and of
course the Crom. On a good night you could having a drink next to The
Bee Gees, Jeff
Beck or The
Who, although, keeping up his avant-garde experimental jazz
appearance, Robert
Wyatt from The Soft Machine couldn't care less: "Rock groups meeting
in expensive clubs that are difficult to get into? What's all that crap?"
On the 19th of January 1967 Jimi Hendrix gave the first of 3 concerts at
The Speak. On top of that he would also jam a few times with other
people on stage, including Jose
Feliciano and Georgie
Fame. That night in January he tried to get into Marianne
Faithfull's pants with the seductive remark: "What are you doing
with this jerk, anyway?" The jerk in question was of course Mick Jagger
who wanted to check out the new kid in town.
Yes-fans
will know the club for its owner Roy Flynn. When, on the 13th of
December 1968, Sly
And The Family Stone didn't show up for their gig an impromptu band
was found to take their place. When Roy Flynn saw Yes's performance he
was so thrilled that he became their manager for a while. The band
eagerly agreed, not because he had some managerial skills but because
the restaurant at The Speak had an excellent reputation:
Roy had never managed a band before and he kind of took us on and then
the whole world of the Speakeasy opened up (laugh). It was a great club,
I mean, it was a wonderful club, it used to close at 4 AM and we would
not only rehearse there, we would play there some nights, and of course
after a gig if we were playing within, let's say 150 miles from London,
we would rush and go to the Speakeasy and eat there, and most of the
meals were completely free. So for about a year I ate pretty good. Most
of the evenings I ate there. Because that was the life style, we would
be in the Speakeasy after 3 AM and the kitchen still would be opened and
the food was not fantastic but thanks to Roy Flynn we would get free
food and quite a lot of few drinks as well. (Peter
Banks, who invented the band's name and left the group in 1970)
The extensive Jimi Hendrix gig database
located at Rich Dickinson only mentions 3 genuine Jimi Hendrix
performances in 1967: the aforementioned gig on the 19th of January 1967
and two more in March: 8th March 1967 and 21st March 1967. So Iggy (and
Anthony Stern) must have attended one of these. For the completists
amongst us the Church gives now the complete list of Hendrix sightings
at the Speakeasy (1967): 67-01-19: Gig. 67-02-22: Press
reception for the Soft Machine. 67-03-08: Gig. 67-03-16:
Launching party for Track records (Jimi gives three interviews). 67-03-21:
Gig. 67-04-17: Jam (on bass) with Georgie Fame (on organ) and
Ben E. King (drums). 67-05-08: Brian Auger Trinity Concert. 67-06-04:
Jose Feliciano concert and onstage jam. 67-12-06: Party for The
Foundations. 67-12-22: Musicians from Christmas on Earth and Hendrix
jam until the morning hours. 67-12-31: New Year's Eve Party where
Jimi plays a thirty minute 'Auld Lang Syne'.
London Live
There is quite an intriguing picture
on page 103 of the London Live book, showing co-managers Roy Flynn and
Mike Carey, sitting at the Speakeasy bar, accompanied by two ladies.
According to CowleyMod
one of the women undoubtedly is Ig. Although most of the members of the
Church do not think it is her the Church wants to give Cowleymod the
benefit of the doubt and the visitors of the Church the chance to make
up their own mind (click here
to see the full picture). Update (November 2010): it has been
confirmed to the Church that the person on the picture is NOT Iggy /
Evelyn.
Iggy said: “I cannot believe there is a film of me, that there are
photos of me.”
Iggy spent a brief part of the 60s
living in Croydon with DJ Jeff Dexter, who used to play at the Orchid
Ballroom. She said: “The Orchid Ballroom was the place to be, the
atmosphere was fantastic. I loved going there, I loved to dance. Jeff
wanted to turn me and two other lovely girls into the English version of
the Supremes, but that never happened.”
She does not
like to talk much about Syd Barrett, but admits she lived with him in
Chelsea in the late 1960s. She said: “Syd was so beautiful looking. We
had a relationship, I lived with him for a while.”
Although the Reverend is aware of at least four witnesses who have
confirmed in different biographies (and directly to the Church) that
Iggy and Syd weren't an item this is now contradicted by Evelyn herself.
It was at that time she became known as Iggy the Eskimo. She said: “In
part I made up the nickname. The rest was the photographer Mick Rock,
who asked where I was from. I said ‘my mother is from the Himalayas’ and
he said ‘we will call you Iggy the Eskimo’.”
Update March 2018: Iggy's mother, so was confirmed to us, didn't
live near the Himalaya's, but at the Lushai Hills, a mountain range in
Mizoram, Mizoram, situated at the North-East of India, sharing borders
with Bangladesh and Myanmar.
NME, 25th of November 1966.
The Church will not deny that Mick Rock may have thrown around the 'Iggy
the Eskimo' nickname to describe the mysterious girl on his pictures but
the epithet dates from much earlier. It was first spotted in the NME
magazine from the 25th of November 1966 (more than 2 years earlier)
where Evelyn was described as 'Another Bender - model IGGY, who is
half-Eskimo': Bend
It!
Mick Rock took the pictures for Madcap Laughs. Iggy said: “When Mick
turned up to take the photos I helped paint the floor boards for the
shoot, I was covered in paint, I still remember the smell of it. In the
pictures my hair looks quite funny, I remember hiding my face behind it
because I did not want my mum and dad to see it."
Again other witnesses tell other stories. They claim that Syd (with a
little help from Iggy) painted the floor boards early in the year,
certainly before April 1969. As Syd only started recording mid-April it
is a bit weird that he painted the boards especially for the album
cover, unless - of course - he (and with him Mick Rock) already had the
cover in mind before the recording sessions started. A theory that is
not implausible.
She broke up with Syd Barrett shortly after the photo shoot and moved to
Brighton. She said: “I have just been living very quietly, I left London
in the 70s and I got married in 1978. I met so many people in the 60s –
the Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart. I was a free
spirit. I have left that life behind me now.”
The Church would gladly accept to publish her memoires though.
But until that happens, my dear sistren and brethren,
don't do anything that Iggy wouldn't have done…
A new gallery has been uploaded containing the complete Come
with NME for a pic-visit to THE CROMWELLIAN article and pictures
from New Musical Express 1037, 25 November 1966. Photographs by Napier
Russel & Barry Peake. Words by Norrie Drummond. (Just another world
exclusive from the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit.)
Sources (other than the above internet links): Bacon, Tony: London
Live, Balafon Books, London, 1999, p. 101-104.
Words: Mark Blake. Pictures: Storm Thorgerson, Iggy Rose, Rank
Organisation. Date: 20 January 2011. Previously published on
mojo.com.
If there is one image of Syd Barrett that never ceases to fascinate it's the
back cover of his debut album, The Madcap Laughs. The reason: the
mysterious naked woman perched on a stool with her head thrown back and
face obscured by swathes of long dark hair. Syd's companion was known
only as "Iggy The Eskimo". But as Barrett fans have been
wondering since 1970 - who was Iggy and where did she go?
Photographer Mick
Rock believed that his cover girl had "married a rich guy and moved
off the scene". Barrett's old flatmate, the artist Duggie Fields,
heard that "Iggy had become involved with one of the voguish religious
cults of the time", before adding to the mythology with a story of once
seeing her disembarking from a Number 31 bus in Kensington, wearing a
1940s-era gold lamé dress, and very little else.
In 2002, Mick's coffee-table book Psychedelic
Renegades featured more shots of Syd and Iggy posing outside the
Earls Court mansion block, alongside Barrett's abandoned Pontiac. Rock's
photos found their way onto most Pink Floyd fansites, where Iggy
had acquired cult status. Before long, The
Holy Church Of Iggy The Inuit, a fansite in her honour, had
appeared, its webmaster, Felix Atagong, sifting through ever scrap of
information gleaned from MOJO and elsewhere with a forensic scientist's
attention to detail. Among Felix's discoveries was a
November 1966 issue of NME which featured a photo of "Iggy who is
half eskimo" dancing at South Kensington's Cromwellian club.
While researching my Pink Floyd biography (2007's Pigs
Might Fly: The Inside Story Of Pink Floyd) I quizzed everyone about
Iggy's whereabouts. Anthony Stern, formerly a schoolmate of David
Gilmour's, told me he had met her at a Hendrix gig and had
just discovered photos he had taken of her on a houseboat in Chelsea;
Anthony had also filmed Iggy dancing in Russell Square. Meanwhile,
former Middle Earth club DJ Jeff Dexter recalled meeting "the
mysterious-looking" Iggy in 1963, when she was a "part of a group of
very wonderful looking South London girls" that danced at The Orchid
Ballroom in Purley. Jeff even hatched a plan with his friend, the late
DJ and Shadows songwriter Ian "Sammy" Samwell, to turn
Iggy and two of her friends into "a British version of The
Supremes. We booked a studio but unfortunately none of them could
sing." Believing that Iggy may have gone to school in Thornton Heath,
Jeff and Anthony contacted The Croydon Guardian, who ran an article - So
Where Did She Go To, My Lovely - enquiring after the whereabouts of the
girl "who entirely captured the spirit of the '60s".
Then, in March 2010, MOJO received a letter from ex-Cambridge mod Pete
Brown, who had "shared some wild nights on the town with Iggy in the
1970s". Pete informed us that Iggy had been last heard of in the '80s
"working at a racing stables... and has since been keeping her
whereabouts quiet." Pete sent a copy of the letter to The Croydon
Guardian, whose reporter traced Iggy through the stables and phoned her
out of the blue. Their subsequent article included a handful of quotes
from its reluctant subject, including the words: "I have now left that
life behind me." Which is why it came as a surprise when my mobile rang
late one Saturday night. "It's Iggy!" declared the voice at the other
end, as if I would have known that already. "I've been reading what you
wrote about me in MOJO... about the pictures of my bottom."
Relaxing on Worthing Beach, early '60s.
The local newspaper's call had prompted Iggy to borrow a neighbour's
computer and go online for the first time. She was amazed to discover
MOJO, the fansites, the photos, and the wild speculation and
misinformation about her time with Syd Barrett. Which is why, in October
2010, I found myself stepping off a train at an otherwise deserted
Sussex railway station to be met by the woman that had once graced the
cover of The Madcap Laughs. Three hours in a local gastro-pub and
countless phone calls later, Iggy pieced together her story. Some of it
was printed in MOJO
207, the rest is here...
Firstly, why Iggy? "My real name is Evelyn," she explains. "But when I
was a child, my neighbour's young daughter could never pronounce Evelyn,
and always called me Iggy. Now everyone calls me as Iggy. But 'The
Eskimo' nickname was a joke. That was something I told the photographer
from the NME when he took my picture at The Cromwellian." Iggy's father
was a British army officer, who served alongside Louis Mountbatten, and
attended the official handover ceremony from Great Britain to India's
first Prime Minister, Jawaharial Nehru in 1947. "My father also knew all
about Mountbatten's wife's affair with Nehru," she adds mischievously.
During a spell of leave, he had travelled to a remote village in the
Himalayas "where he met the woman that would become my mother." Iggy was
born in Pakistan, and attended army schools in India and Aden, before
the family moved to England. But not, as believed, Thornton Heath. "I
grew up by the seaside," she reveals. "I went to art school. I became a
mod in Brighton, and saw the fights with the rockers, and I met The
Who when they were on Ready Steady Go! I loved soul music, loved The
Righteous Brothers, and I loved dancing, so I used to go to all the
clubs - The Orchid Ballroom in Purley, where I met lovely Jeff Dexter,
The Cromwellian, The Flamingo, The Roaring Twenties..."
It was at The Cromwellian that Iggy encountered Eric Clapton. "I
didn't know who he was at first," she insists. "He took me to meet Lionel
Bart and to a party at Brian Epstein's place..." By the
mid-'60s Iggy had become a Zelig-like presence on the capital's music
scene, sometimes in the company of Keith Moon, Brian Jones,
Keith Richards.... She saw Hendrix make his UK debut at the Bag
O' Nails in November '66, and in February '67, narrowly avoided the
police raid at Richards' country pile, in West Wittering: "The night
before, I decided not to go, thank God." A year later, still in the
Stones' orbit, she found herself watching the recording sessions for
what became Sympathy For The Devil.
Iggy at Granny Takes A Trip, 1967.
By then, Iggy had made her film debut. In 1967, IN Gear was a short
documentary screened as a supporting film in cinemas around the country.
Its theme was Swinging London, including the chic Kings Road clothes
shop Granny Takes A Trip, a place, according to the breathless narrator
that "conforms to the non-conformist image of the !" A
mini-skirted Iggy can be seen in one silent clip, sifting through a
rack of clothes and chatting with Granny's co-owner Nigel Waymouth.
By 1967, pop music had changed. The summer before, Iggy had met Syd
Barrett's girlfriend Jenny Spires, and drifted into the Floyd's social
clique, showing up at the UFO club nights where Pink Floyd played
regularly: "When I recently watched that Syd Barrett documentary [The
Pink Floyd & Syd Barrett & Story] and saw Syd in the kaftan,
chanting [on Pow R Toc H], the memories came rushing back," she
explains. "I'd been there. I'd seen that." In April '67, Iggy joined the
counter-culture throng in Alexandra Palace for The
14-Hour Technicolor Dream - "all 14 hours of it!" - where Floyd
played a hypnotic set at dawn.
By early 1968, though Barrett had been replaced by David Gilmour, and,
according to many, was on a drug-fuelled downward spiral. Towards the
end of the year, he moved into a new place with his level-headed friend,
the would-be artist Duggie Fields. The pair took over a two-bedroom flat
at 29
Wetherby Mansions in Earls Court. Around January '69, at Jenny
Spires' suggestion, Iggy, needing a place to stay, moved in. She hooked
up with Barrett, but shared a musical bond with Fields: "Duggie and I
were into soul music, and Syd used to laugh at me dancing around to
Motown."
As Iggy told MOJO 207: "I didn't know Syd had been a pop star."
Elaborating further, "I didn't make the connection between him and the
person I had seen at UFO. I knew he was beautiful looking and he had
real presence, but that was all." Once, when she picked up his acoustic
guitar, fooling around, he took it off her and started playing properly.
"I was overwhelmed. The way he played the guitar, the way he moved. He
said, 'Do you think I look good?'," she laughs. "I said, 'You look
amazing. Wow!' He then said, 'Would you listen to this?' And he bought
out this big, old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder, and said, 'Tell
me what you think'." Syd then played her the songs that would end up on
The Madcap Laughs. One track, Terrapin,
made an immediate impression. "I said, 'That's quite catchy', and, of
course, I don't think Syd was really into catchy...It was a long tape,
and he didn't demand any opinion, but just asked if I thought it was OK.
At the end he said 'Someone at EMI - I cannot remember the name - wants
me to make a record. How would you feel about having a rock star
boyfriend?'"
Words: Mark Blake. Pictures: Iggy Rose, Chris Lanaway. Date: 20
January 2011. Previously published on mojo.com.
While there are many reports of Barrett being withdrawn and even
aggressive at this time, Iggy remembers it differently. "People talk
about Syd's madness and his dark side, but I never saw it," she states.
"We had a wonderful giggly time. There were no sinister moments." Only
briefly did she glimpse a more troubled side to his personality. "One
day, he said to me, 'How do you feel? Are you sad?' I was naked, and he
went and got some paint and painted two great big eyes on my breasts
with two tears coming down, and on my belly button he painted an arrow
and underneath that a picture of me with a big belly, and said, 'There
could be life in there. I could give you life.' But I didn't want that
at all. So I panicked, and scrubbed it off." He was also uncomfortable
with some aspects of fame, as Iggy discovered on a night out with Syd to
The Speakeasy, a music-biz haunt in Margaret Street. "We'd persuaded Syd
to go, but it was full of posers," she admits. "There were a few of us
there. Someone asked the DJ to put on See Emily Play, which was a stupid
thing to do." A hit for Pink Floyd more than two years before, the
dance-floor cleared. "So I went on and started dancing, but Syd ran off.
He was obviously very sensitive about it all."
"We had a wonderful giggly time. There were no sinister moments."
In March '69, Barrett began recording The Madcap Laughs at Abbey Road,
but his erratic behaviour in the studio resulted in Roger Waters
and David Gilmour helping to oversee the sessions. Gilmour was now
living in Richmond Mansions, a block so close to Wetherby Mansions that
he could almost see into Syd and Duggie's kitchen window. One evening,
Syd announced that he had to go out. Iggy wanted to go with him, but
Barrett insisted she remain at the flat. "I think I thought he was
seeing another woman," she says. "I got a bit jealous, a bit pouty -
very silly. Duggie knew where Syd had gone but wouldn't tell me." With
Syd gone, Iggy decided to pay a visit to David Gilmour instead. Fields
helped Iggy back-comb her hair, plaster her face with make-up and paint
her lips black. "I looked like Medusa. Like a banshee. Duggie then took
me round to Dave's place. Dave was very beautiful and very cool, and his
flat was nicer than Syd and Duggie's - it was warmer for a start. Dave
opened the door, took one look at me, but didn't bat an eyelid."
Iggy in 1978.
When Iggy walked in, she saw Syd sat in Gilmour's living room. "I went
in, shouting, 'OK, where is she?' thinking there was a woman hiding in
one of the rooms. But, of course, the meeting had been with Dave about
the record they were making together." Barrett left Iggy with Gilmour,
but rather the worse for wear, she knocked the stylus on his record
player accidentally scratching his copy of Pink Floyd's brand new album.
"I have no idea what album it was, only that it was their new album,"
Iggy sighs. (The likely candidate seems to be Soundtrack From The Film
More) "So Dave threw me out... If he ever reads this I would like to say
sorry for scratching his record." Back at Wetherby Mansions, Barrett was
unfazed by her planned defection: "Syd just said, 'Come in love, and
I'll make you a cup of tea'. How sweet."
By now, Barrett had prepared his bedroom for The Madcap... cover shoot,
painting most of the floorboards orange and mauve. On the morning of the
shoot, Syd asked Iggy to help finish the job. "He jumped off the
mattress and said, 'Quick, grab a paint brush.' He did one stripe and I
did another. If you look at Mick Rock's pictures, I have paint on the
soles of my feet." When Rock arrived with the Floyd's sleeve designer Storm
Thorgerson to take the photos, a naked Iggy went to put some clothes
on. "But Syd said, 'No, don't'. That was his wicked sense of humour. I
put the kohl around his eyes that day and tousled up his hair: come on
Syd, give us a smile, moody, moody, moody! But he knew exactly what he
was doing. He was as sharp as anything. He set the tone. He was the
manipulator."
"Syd just said, 'Come in love, and I'll make you a cup of tea'. How
sweet."
Iggy joined Syd for further photos outside the flat. Later, Rock
recalled showing Barrett one of the pictures and Syd mysteriously
scratching around Iggy's image; an act that has acquired some
significance among Barrett's more earnest devotees. "They're making
something out of nothing," she insists. "Later on, Syd showed me one of
the pictures and said, 'You like that one, don't you? I know why,
because of your cheekbones'. I think I was sucking on a cigarette, and,
yes, I was being vain, I liked the way my cheekbones looked. So he tore
the pic in half and gave it to me. There was nothing more to it than
that." Strangely, Iggy also recalls other photographs being taken that
day, which have never appeared since. "I don't think Storm and Mick were
very impressed by them. If you've ever seen the cover of the Rod
Stewart album, Blondes Have More Fun, they were a bit like that...
Of me and Syd. There were others of me and Syd, as well, which remind me
of the picture of John and Yoko [on Two Virgins] which came out later.
I'd love to see those pictures now."
Before long, Iggy had drifted out of Wetherby Mansions and out of Syd's
life as quickly as she had drifted in. When she returned later, Duggie
told her: "Syd's not here. He's gone back to Cambridge. Don't bother
trying to find him." She never saw him again, and is adamant she only
became aware of her presence on the cover of The Madcap Laughs
after being phoned by the Croydon Guardian: "I went to a boot sale with
my husband... When I saw the cover, I thought, Oh yes, that is my
bottom."
Although the stories of her marrying a rich banker and joining a
religious cult are untrue, there is a kernel of truth: after Syd, Iggy
began seeing a wealthy businessman who was also a scientologist. However
Duggie Fields' recollection of spotting Iggy climbing off a bus in a
gold lamé dress is not in dispute: "It was a beautiful dress that cost
£50." Still a fixture on the music scene, Iggy recalls accompanying Pink
Fairies' drummer Twink to the Isle Of Wight Festival and turning up
"for the very first Glastonbury... ". But in 1978 Iggy married her
husband, Andrew, and "left that life behind me".
"I heard on the radio that Syd died, and I felt sad, but it was so long
ago," she says. Since reading about those times in MOJO, the memories of
the people and the places have slowly come back to her. "Mick Rock took
some beautiful picture of me," she smiles. "But, of course, I wish I'd
been paid some money for them. Still, it is amazing that people have
been looking for me... and that someone has even set up a website. I
still don't know what to make of all this." The fascination continues.
Last week, Iggy called to tell me she had found a poem online written
about her by a professor at a university in Missouri. "And it's in
French," she said, sounding astonished. "'Iggy l'esquimo, Fille De Le
Space'...it goes. I never believed anyone would ever write a poem for
me."
Since yesterday, Mark
Blake's 'director cut edition' of his Iggy interview can be
found on the Mojo
website. For those that are not 'in' let's recapitulate a bit.
Update August 2013: The articles are no longer on the Mojo
website. Mark Blake allowed us to host them at the Church.
Somewhere in November 2010 the Church of Iggy the Inuit prophesied
that a lucubrated (second) Iggy interview was in the make and that after
other attempts had not always been successful. Basically Iggy had been
scared off when she had been questioned – out of the blue - by a
journalist, early 2010. Imagine that you have been living a quiet life
for a couple of decades and suddenly someone pokes you in the stomach
and urges you to start digging in a very far past, asking what you did
on a particular April night in 1969. Then you find out that there is a
lunatic on the cybergrass who has written over sixty articles about you.
It would scare the hell out of this Reverend, I can assure you that.
Contradictory to yours truly, Mark Blake is reliable, loyal and, above
all, discreet. He managed to regain Ig's confidence and they agreed to
do an interview on her terms. Mojo
207 (February 2011 issue) had indeed the promised Iggy article on
page 18, but... - let's not beat around the bush - we Iggy aluminati
were a bit disappointed with its scarce content.
Once again the Church (accurately) predicted that the printed piece in
Mojo was but a mere teaser for an expatiated article that would soon
appear in cyberspace. And what an article that is! It contains some
pretty unseen pictures
and enough material to keep on adding comments on this blog for many,
many months to come. The interview – the Reverend guarantees you - will
be research material for all Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd biographies to
come, not that the Church is really asking for new biographies, but that
is entirely besides the point.
Iggy 1978 (exclusive to the Church).
As is the habit with the Church the interview will only be commented
upon after it has been around for a while, but it already needs to be
said that Ig's words smash several of the Church's axioms to pieces.
Normally a Church doesn't like to see its dogmas destroyed but here is
what we call divine intervention.
To end this sermon, my loyal brethren and sistren, the
Reverend ordains you to immediately leave the Church and not to come
back until you have thoroughly consulted Mark Blake's The
Strange Tale Of Iggy The Eskimo. The Church does not want to
prejudice you. Read it first and we'll talk about it afterwards.
Oh and another thing... the above picture is an unpublished
photograph of Iggy in the Seventies. The Reverend wishes to thank Iggy
for her trust and confidence in us.
Many thanks go to: Mark Blake, Mojo, Kieren and all those supportive
Barrett friends at Late Night (more about them later, in a new post).
Mark Blake has just written a decent Queen biography: Is This The Real
Life? The Untold Story Of Queen, Aurum Press Ltd - ISBN: 9781845135973.
Of course you still check out his much acclaimed Pink Floyd biography,
although it lacks a bit in the Iggy department [insert sardonic smiley
here]: Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story Of Pink Floyd, Aurum Press Ltd -
ISBN-10: 1845132610 / ISBN-13: 978-1845132613. (The Church is not
affiliated with or endorsed by this company.)
It is with great pleasure that the Reverend introduces a new contributor
at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. Not only did Antonio Jesús live in
the beautiful city of Cambridge but as editor of the slightly fantastic
Spanish Syd Barrett blog Solo en las Nubes he has published
several Autoentrevista or Self-Interviews with Barrett
specialists, biographers and friends.
These interviews will now find their way to the English speaking part of
the world at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. We start with a bang as
this one is already a world exclusive, an interview with the manager of
one of Syd's first Cambridge bands: Those Without.
If you would like to visit Cambridge this summer, it is too late to book
an I
Spy Syd In Cambridge tour. In 2008, Warren Dosanjh, Syd Barrett's
first manager, was invited by a non-profit organisation to guide
visitors through the city. Many of these field trips had exclusive and
unexpected guests and left the visitors in awe.
Warren Dosanjh is every inch a guide. I was lucky to attend the very
first tour, still a try-out, and it was a blast. He told us a thousand
and one stories and anecdotes like only an expert could do. On top of
that he also knows the best places in the slummy parts of Cambridge.
But today we're lucky as Warren has decided to give a self-interview for
Solo En Las Nubes.
Where did you meet Syd Barrett for the first time?
We were at the same school. It was called The Cambridgeshire High School
for Boys aka The County. Roger, as he was called then, was a year below
me. I think that Roger Waters was one or two years above.
Those Without (the early days).
How well did you know him then?
Quite well but not as a close friend. Many of us were excited about the
emergence of rock'n roll, R&B and to a degree some folk music,
particularly Bob Dylan. Some evenings were spent at Syd's home in Hills
Road or that of a neighbour, Dick Whyte, listening to and playing music.
Did you play a musical instrument?
I tried very hard to learn the 5-string banjo but as I am left-handed it
proved to be too difficult in the long-term.
How did the band Those Without evolve?
Alan 'Barney' Barnes and Steve Pyle came to my home one evening wanting
to form a new band. They were in a band called Hollerin' Blues
but wanted to disband as a means of getting rid of Brian Scott, their
manager. They asked me to be the manager of the new band and I agreed.
And the name Those Without?
Very late that same night Steve spotted a book on my shelf titled Those
Without Shadows by Françoise
Sagan. "That's it! We just drop the word Shadows.", said Steve. All
bands in those days seemed to be called 'The' someone or other and this
was certainly a new concept in band names.
Volkswagen Dormobile.
So what was it like being a manager?
Getting the bookings was quite easy I remember. The difficult bits were
having transport for us and the equipment particularly when we played
outside of Cambridge. Luckily I had a lovely girlfriend Vernia whose
father owned a VW
Dormobile.
But the most difficult part for me was handling Alan Barnes. He was
without doubt one of the best musicians around, playing keyboards,
harmonica and singing lead. He had a great feel for R&B. But
unfortunately he knew this and could be very contentious and 'up
himself' after a few drinks. There were often occasions when I would
have to take him outside for a quiet word.
So what sort of music did Those Without play?
Mostly R&B. Bands like Jokers Wild were mostly playing cover versions of
pop records in the charts whereas a few bands like ourselves were
playing classic R&B covers of artists like John Lee Hooker, Howlin'
Wolf, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, etc...
Syd with Those Without.
How did Syd get in the band?
Syd wanted to have a go at being in a band. He had previously played for
one night at a CND fund-raising event with a band invented for just that
night, called Geoff Mott & The Mottoes. Steve Pyle brought
Syd along to a practise and asked if he could play bass with us and help
out on the vocals. They were at that time both at The Cambridge School
of Art. I remember Syd bringing along The Kinks' new record - 'You
Really Got Me' - and playing it over and over again.
You mention The Kinks - were there any other bands that influenced
you?
I guess you have to mention The Rolling Stones and The Animals. But at
the grass-roots were people like Cyril
Davies R&B All Stars (Long John Baldry, Dick Heckstall-Smith)
and Graham
Bond Organisation.
So what was special about Cambridge in the 60s?
It was unique. A melting pot of contrasting views, opinions and
influences that often fused together to create a new exciting life for
young people trying to throw off the shackles of post-war Britain. I
remember Allan Ginsberg giving a poetry reading at King's, Duke
Ellington playing an organ recital at Gt. St Mary's Church, student
'rag' days, continental films at The Arts Cinema, nights in Grantchester
Meadows, smoking my first spliff and losing my virginity. Much much
more...
Those Without Shadows.
When did you last see Syd?
I saw him a lot in the 60s. He played with the band about 12 times
before finally settling in London and forming Pink Floyd. When he
returned to Cambridge and after the failure of Stars he became more
reclusive. Sometimes I would pass him in the street as he lived just
around the corner from me but he was always in a different world and I
didn't want to invade his privacy.
We, his school mates and friends, just let him go about his business. We
just remember him not for Pink Floyd but as a well-spoken likeable guy
that we grew up with - a friend who just lost his way.
Check out the I
Spy Syd in Cambridge website that holds many goodies, even now
when the tours no longer exists.
The music scene of Cambridge, Walking Tour, Venues and Bands. A
must read for everyone who is interested in Syd's Cambridge. This 36
pages booklet contains a Cambridge city map and has descriptions of the
different venues and many unknown Cambridge bands of the Sixties.
Researched and compiled by Warren Dosanjh. Edited and layout by Mick
Brown. Further contributions and research: Lee Wood, Alan Willis, Jenny
Spires, Brian Foskett, Viv ‘Twig’ Brans, Stephen Pyle, Albert Prior,
Jess Applin, Cherrill Richardson, Mike Richardson, Hank Wingate, David
Ellingham, Jonathon Church, Sudhir Agar, Dave Parker, Graham Smith, Tony
Middleton, Ivan Carling, Judy Woodford, Jenny Taylor, Stuart Dingley,
Dave Thaxter, Tim Renwick, Pete Rhodes. (March
2011 PDF download, about 5 MB)
History
of Those Without and Hollerin' Blues, with the staggering news that Syd
Barrett has never been a member of that last band. More about the
different gigs
of Those Without (with and without Syd).
Pink Floyd Syd Barrett Interviews with Friends (2009): Roger
"Syd" Barrett - Cambridge Autumn 2009 Interviews with friends Richard
Jacobs, Sue Unwin, John Watkins, Stephen Pyle, Warren Dosanjh, Diana
McKenna, et.al. by Alexandros Papathanasiou. Hosted at Youtube: Pink
Floyd Syd Barrett Interviews with Friends.
Reflections: Sixties Counterculture in Cambridge, a film from
Alexandros Papathanasiou & Kameron Stroud (2011). Reminiscence of the
sixties alternative movement in Cambridge by 7 local interviewees,
including Warren Dosanjh and Stephen Pyle. The film reflects the
interviewees memories during that time as well as it addresses their
powerful conclusions about the impact of the 60's alternative generation
on the present time. Hosted at Youtube: part
1 (10:46) and part
2 (10:11). Hosted at Vimeo: Reflections.
Is there really a Barrett revival going on, or are we just seeing more
Syd fans because our global village is getting smaller and smaller? I do
remember the early seventies when the only guy you could speak to about
Barrett was a freakish weirdo who smoked pot in the school toilets and
who was generally avoided by everyone, including the school teachers.
The vibrant Birdie
Hop Facebook group is sky-rocketing with over 1200 members and a
dozen new threads a day, but the traditional forum
has come to a standstill and survives on its three posters a day, so the
feeling is a bit ambiguous.
Facebook may be here to stay (but that was once said from MySpace
as well, remember?) but basically it sucks if you want to find
information and you are not employed by the NSA.
While traditional forums have this newbie rule to go looking in the
archives before asking a question this is virtually impossible on
Facebook, because their search system simply doesn't work and links are
automatically made redundant after a certain time. The whole 'group'
concept of Facebook is a laugh, especially for administrators.
Underneath is a screenshot of an actual search on Facebook, trying to
locate the thread
(Facebook link no longer active) this article is about...
Sausalito Facebook Search Results.
So, by design, Facebook groups are condemned to have a flow of
'continuous repetition' to paraphrase the wise words of Dr. Hans
Keller while the one interesting thread is floating down around the
icy waters underground. (Wow, this is a good cigarette.)
Waiting for the man
A couple of weeks ago Baron
Wolman's picture
of Pink Floyd toying around at the Casa
Madrona hotel in Sausalito
(CA) was posted again and as usual there was that one individual asking
if anybody knew who the bloke was standing behind the boys.
Picture: Baron Wolman, 11 November 1967.
As a matter of fact nobody remembers, not even Nick
Mason, who writes in the coffee-table edition of Inside
OutNote:
Tea on the terrace at our hotel in Sausalito on the hillside above San
Fransisco Bay (…) I have no idea who our tea-time partner was – the
hotel manager, an under assistant West Coast promotion man, or a vendor
of Wild West apparel? We eventually acquired enough cowboy hats for the
entire population of Dodge City, and Roger commissioned a six-gun
holster in which he carried his wallet.
So here was another quest for the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit,
that splendid non-profit organisation, lead by that fantabulous
mastermind Reverend Felix Atagong who has already solved several
Barrettian riddles in the past.
Hotel California
The obvious first step was to contact the hotel that doesn't hesitate to
put on its website
that it is a legend since 1885 and that it drew celebrities such as Dick
Van Dyke, Carol Burnett, Warren Beatty and the rock band Pink Floyd.
We got a very friendly answer from Stefan Mühle, the general manager,
that our guess was logical but that he didn't know either. Since 1967
the hotel changed hands a couple of times and the finer side of these
anecdotes, that only seem to bother the Sydiots in the world, got lost
in the mist of times.
Concert Poster 1967.
Before we continue with our quest, let's have a small history lesson.
In the summer of 1967 Syd Barrett suffered from something that
was euphemistically referred to as over-fatigue. The band scrapped some
gigs and send Barrett over to sunny Formentera under supervision of
doctor Sam
Hutt, the underground's leading gynaecologist. Unfortunately Smutty,
as he was invariably called by his female patients, was the kind of
doctor who rather prescribed LSD
than aspirin. After some holidays in the sun Syd (and the rest of the
boys) returned to England where the endless treadmill of gigging,
recording, gigging, recording started all over again. (You can read more
about the Floyd's holiday at Formentera
Lady.)
In retrospect this was the moment that someone should've grabbed Syd by
the balls, whether he wanted it or not, drag him back to Cambridge, cold
turkey him and give him some proper therapy, although that was kind of
non-existent in those days. William
Pryor, a Cambridge beat poet who descended from the underground into
a heroine maelström, describes the Cane
Hill drug rehabilitation centre as a 'redecorated ward of a huge
Victorian lunatic asylum village that had been given a coat of paint and
a fancy name' where it was almost easier to score H than in the outside
world.
This is not America
Pink Floyd's first American tour was planned between 23 October and 12
November 1967 but because there was a rather Kafkaesque bureaucratic
system to get work permits up till 15 possible gigs had to be cancelled
(according to Julian
Palacios 8 had already been booked, Mark
Blake sticks to 6 and Syd
Barrett Pink Floyd dot com counts 10).
The trustworthy biographies all have (slightly) different stories but it
is safe to say that the Floyd left for America with at least a week
delay. Unfortunately they still couldn't enter the country and had to
wait in Canada until their permits arrived while the management
frantically tried to reschedule the gigs that had already been confirmed.
Concert Poster 1967.
Pink Floyd had been nicknamed 'The Light Kings of England' by Tower
Records, but they had only played in small clubs up till now. When
the Floyd had their first gig at San Francisco’s Winterland
Auditorium on the 4th of November their light show was ridiculously
small and amateurish compared to Big
Brother and The Holding Company. But it was not only Janis
Joplin's whiskey breath that blew Syd away.
The 1967 American tour was disastrous, to say the least, and quite a few
gigs went horribly wrong. Luckily the natives were friendly, so friendly
that at least one band member had to visit a venereal disease clinic
back in the UK. Syd and Peter
Wynne-Willson learned the hard way that American grass was much
stronger than at home, leading to another ruined gig as Syd was
apparently too stoned to handle his guitar. It is an educated guess that
Syd tried some local drug varieties like DMT
and STP
that were much stronger than their British counterparts. DOM
or STP or Serenity, Tranquility and Peace allegedly gave synaesthetic
trips that could last for 18 hours and from testimonies by Pete
Townshend, Eric Clapton and Mick Farren it is known that it could take a
week for some (frightening) hallucinatory effects to disappear. Julian
Palacios, who dedicates 11 pages to the Floyd's first American tour in Dark
Globe, writes:
Associated with the downfall of Haight-Ashbury, on 11 November pink
wedge-shaped pills containing 20-micrograms of DOM hit the Haight.
Haight-Ashbury Medical Clinic treated eighteen cases of acute toxic
psychosis in five hours. When Barrett and Wynne-Willson took STP in San
Francisco, this was in all likelihood the same ‘pink wedge’.
Result: if Syd Barrett had been mad before, this tour only made
him madder. At the Cheetah club he received an electroshock from his
microphone and he reacted by looking around on stage for the next hour
and a half, not singing, not playing his guitar. He would be
incommunicado to the others for the rest of the tour, who weren't very
keen to talk to him anyway. It needs to be said that not all gigs were
catastrophic and some reviewers actually found the band interesting, but
we wouldn't go that far by calling Syd's erratic behaviour a cleverly
performed dadaist statement like Rob
Chapman suggests.
Rolling Stone 1.
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
A brand new music magazine, called Rolling
Stone, whose first issue had just appeared a couple of days before,
wanted to do a feature on the new English underground sensation. They
send over photographer Baron
Wolman to the Casa Madrona hotel in Sausalito who found the lads in
a good mood and joking around. But when the band performed at Winterland
that night, the 11th of November, Ralph
Gleason of Rolling Stone was so disappointed he decided not to
publish the cover article and just reviewed the concert saying that
'Pink Floyd for all its electronic interest is simply dull in a dance
hall'. This was also the gig where Syd detuned the strings of his guitar
until they fell off, de facto ending his contribution for the
rest of the show. The next day, on the last gig of the American tour,
the band saw Syd walking off stage and for the first time voices were
raised to kick him out.
In retrospect this was another moment that someone should've grabbed Syd
by the balls, whether he wanted it or not, and drag him back to
Cambridge, but the management insisted to immediately fly to Holland.
Thirty-seven years later, Nick Mason more or less apologises:
If proof was needed that we were in denial about Syd's state of mind,
this was it. Why we thought a transatlantic flight immediately followed
by yet more dates would help is beyond believe.
This is the house
William Barrett Plaque.
Casa
Madrona was build in February 1885 for (isn't it ironic?) William
G. Barrett, a wealthy Vermont born lumber baron and
Secretary-Treasurer for the San
Francisco Gas and Electric Company. He and his family lived high
above the town in his beautifully designed Italian Villa country home.
Architecturally, it was a mastery of craftmanship, a tall and stately
mansion which stood upon the hill-side. Its three stories, with handsome
porticos and verandas, projecting cornice with curved brackets, and
hooded windows, received prominent recognition from the community. This
resulted in an article in the Sausalito News in 1885, which praised Mr.
Barrett's "New Mansion... its fine appearance, magnificent view", and
called the Barrett place "one of the finest improved sites in
Sausalito." (Taken from the National
Register of Historic Places.)
In 1906 the house was sold to attorney John Patrick Gallagher who
converted it into a successful hotel. For the next three decades Barrett
House (and its four outbuildings) would be a hotel, a bar 'the Gallagher
Inn' and a brothel, but that last is something you won't find at the
hotel's website.
Barrett House.
During World War II, the property was used as temporary lodging for
military families in transit and for the labourers of the nearby
(military) shipyard. After the war it fell into disrepair and became
known as a crash pad for the city’s burgeoning beatnik population.
In February 1959 Robert and Marie-Louise Deschamps, who
had just immigrated from France, responded to an ad to run a 'small
hotel'. Their children Marie-France and 24-year old Jean-Marie
were there when they opened a nameless bar on the 27th of April 1959:
The building was in ruins. Mattresses on the floor, broken furniture -
and very little of that. It was not ‘bohemian’ - it was a flop house!
The Deschamps family had no hotel experience and were rather
unpleasantly surprised by the beatniks who rarely paid their bills. The
bar was not an immediate success either, they would often find that the
door had been smashed in at night and the beer stolen. The logical plan
was to close the hotel, evict the hobos and start all over again.
San Mateo Times, 1963-06-28.
When the renewed hotel, in exclusive French style, and an excellent
restaurant 'Le Vivoir' were opened about a year later Jean-Marie
left the parental home to sail the seven seas, working as a cook on
Norwegian and Swedish ships. He returned to the hotel around the
mid-sixties and moved into Cottage B. Several guests, from the
pre-sixties bohemian days, were still living in the 'attached' cottages,
including a Swedish baron who had served in the Waffen SS, an ex-CIA
agent who claimed to have been a spy in Vienna, a mostly drunk beatnik
writer and adventurer and, last but not least, a continuously depressed
crew member of one of the planes that dropped the atom bomb on Japan.
In 1973 Casa Madrona was damaged by a series of mudslides and scheduled
for demolition, but it was saved in 1976. Since then it changed owner
several times and went even bankrupt in 2009. With the opening of a spa
resort the hotel was, hopefully, given a new life and history.
Jean-Marie Deschamps
It is believed that Jean-Marie Deschamps, the owner's son, was
living and working at the hotel when the Pink Floyd stayed there in
November 1967, 2 months before his 32nd birthday. We contacted Baron
Wolman who told us:
While I'm not entirely certain that he was Deschamps himself, for sure
he was a principal in the hotel - owner, manager, chef, etc. Given the
look, however, I would say your educated guess is probably correct...
Comparing the Floydian picture (1967) with one from 2005 it seems pretty
safe to say there is a certain resemblance. Update January
2014: The Deschamps family have confirmed it is Jean-Marie standing
behind Pink Floyd.
Jean was born on January 20, 1936 and passed away on Tuesday, December
8, 2009. In a (French) obituary it is written how Jean-Marie was an
'incorrigible globe-trotting vagabond' whose home was always 'elsewhere'
and an anarchistic supporter of lost causes, like the rights of native
Americans. Later on, despising the Bush administration, he was an ardent
critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...
But once a cook, always a cook. The night before he died he asked his
(fourth) wife Monica to note down the Christmas menu for his children
and grandchildren, probably knowing that he wouldn't be there to attend.
January 2010 saw a 'sumptuous feast' at the Barrel Room of the Sebastiani
Winery in Sanoma (CA) where 150 guests honoured their friend,
husband, father, grandfather. The place was a gathering of artists,
writers, businessmen, hosts, globetrotters and vagabonds.
If only someone would have had the guts to find out earlier who was the
man standing behind the band. It would've been swell to ask him about
his meeting with the Floyd in 1967, but unfortunately now it is too late
for that. We are pretty sure that it would have led to a tsunami of
anecdotes as Jean-Marie Deschamps had always been a sailor and a
vagabond at heart.
And we will never know what Syd thought of staying in Barrett House.
Alan Styles & Iggy. Picture: Mick Rock.
An Ending In Style (or not)
We need an addendum as the Pink Floyd in Sausalito saga isn't over yet.
When Pink Floyd roadie Alan Styles, who used to be a punter on the river
Cam, saw the house
boats community in Sausalito he fell in love with the place and
decided not to return home after the 1972-1973 Dark Side of the Moon
tour. Alan, who was some kind of celebrity in Cambridge before anyone
had heard of Pink Floyd, can be seen on the rear cover of the Ummagumma
album and makes out the bulk of the 'musique
concrète' on Alan's
Psychedelic Breakfast (Atom Heart Mother).
In 2000 a short
movie was made about Style's life in Sausalito, but it was only
released after his death in 2011. It is the story of a man wanting to be
free in a world that keeps on abolishing freedom. In a nice gesture to
their old friend Pink Floyd Ltd cleared the copyrights for the movie, as
told by Viper:
Nick Mason messaged me on FB as I'd been asking on his site about
permission to release the video about my uncle. Nick gave me PF's
management details and in turn David Gilmour gave us permission to
release the video as it contains original PF music.
But when the Reverend visited Jon Felix's YouTube
channel this is all he got, apparently EMI (and a lot of other acronyms)
don't give a fuck about what Nick Mason or David Gilmour are deciding or
what friendship, compassion, remembrance and especially respect is all
about:
Blocked Youtube movie.
In some kind of weird Floydian cosmic joke Alan Styles died on the same
day as Jean-Marie Deschamps, but two years later, on the 8th of December
2011.
Somewhere we think we should try to make a point, but we can't think of
anything right now.
Note: The memoires of Nick Mason's Inside Out are (90%)
identical between the different editions. However, the hardcover
'deluxe' edition contains hundreds of photos that aren't in the cheaper
soft-cover versions. These pictures all have funny and informative notes
that aren't present in the paperback editions. Back to top.
Many thanks to: the Deschamps family, Jon Felix, Yves Leclerc, Stefan
Mühle (Casa Madrona Hotel & Spa), Viper, Baron Wolman, USA National
Register off Historic Places. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above internet links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 95-96. Chapman,
Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 198. Leclerc,
Yves: Bum Chromé, Blogspot, 9
décembre 2009, 10
janvier 2010. Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of
Pink Floyd, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004, p. 93. Mason,
Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Orion Books,
London, 2011 reissue, p. 98-102. Mühle, Stefan: JM Deschamps
on Baron Wolman picture?, email, 21.10.2013. Palacios, Julian: Syd
Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London, 2010, p.
289-290, 298. Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink
Floyd, 3C Publishing, 2008, p. 45-46, 69. Pryor, William: The
Survival Of The Coolest, Clear Books, 2003, p. 106. Wolman,
Baron: Casa Madrona - Pink Floyd + unknown man, email, 14.10.2013.
NSFW warning: this article contains pictures of naked b⊚⊚bs which
may result in temporary blindness for minors.
On the 5th of March 2009 the Syd Barrett Trust received Fart
Enjoy, a one-off book, created and illustrated by Syd Barrett,
believed to be made late 1964 or during 1965. It was donated by Syd's
school friend Andrew
Rawlinson who had kept it all these years. The day after it was put
for auction
on eBay. On Monday the 23rd March the highest bid reached £27,323 but
this was rejected and brought back to £12,100. Eventually the book sold
for £12,600.
Black Holes
The Trust published all the pages of the (f)art-book and a moving essay
of Andrew Rawlinson about his friend. Unfortunately this has all
disappeared. The trust was constructed around Barrett's heritage,
estimated at about one
million seven hundred-thousand pounds. Barrett's household
articles and furniture made £119,890 for charity, the Two
Warriors mosaic went for £10,700 and three (big) Mick
Rock prints were auctioned as well, half of the proceedings going to
the Fund. (Mick Rock always needs to have a slice of the pie.)
And yet, 12 pounds a year to keep their website running was too much to
ask, http://www.syd-barrett-trust.org.uk
now points to a Japanese website trying to find nurses in Saitama
city. (Update 2017: it now simply points to a blank page.)
All related websites (and organisations) seem to have vanished: Syd
Barrett Trust, Syd Barrett Fund (the change of name
took place at the request of the Barrett family), Interstellar, The City
Wakes, Escape Artists,... We came across the rumour that Escape Artists
was, and we quote: 'a financially incompetent group'. The Syd Barrett
Fund was probably conned by 'useless PR men and bullshitters', but as we
can't verify this we'll leave it like that. Eventually Escape
Artists dissolved and Rosemary Breen, Syd's sister, teamed up with Squeaky
Gate that seems seemed to be a more reliable charity.
Update 8 April 2014: The metaphorical ink on this page wasn't
even dry or we were informed, on 30 March 2014, that Squeaky Gate may
need to close the books. While chief executive Simon Gunton told the Cambridge
News (on the 7th of April) that the fundings, coming from the
government, were running dry, the rumour pit in Cambridge has a slightly
more salient story of several ten thousands of pounds disappearing from
its bank account. Syd Barrett & charity: it's no good trying. Update
9 April 2014: We have had confirmation that Squeaky Gate is now history.
Well not exactly. Page 13 was missing and replaced by the following
cryptic text:
This particular page has been left blank for legal reasons For
further details see www.pinkfloyd.com
For many fans the abundance of the 'fuck' word (9 times) and the
presence of a pin-up might have had something to do with that.
Especially in America big chains do not like to sell records that may
potentially besmirch the frail American psyche with swear words and
naked boobs. Going to the official Pink Floyd website obviously didn't
explain anything at all, so Keith Jordan of Neptune
Pink Floydcontacted
the band's management:
Pink Floyd's manager told me earlier that the page is missing from the
album booklet because of copyright issues. EMI are not willing to face
unlimited litigation against them for including it! So it's not about
censorship at all!
Which is weird as the missing page had been published in Tim Willis's Madcap
book before and it can be still found on the NPF website
(and numerous others) as well.
Fart Enjoy Pin-Up.
Scribbled Lines
Should you not know what all this hassle is about, at the left is the
picture in question. It surely gives the impression that Roger Keith
Barrett, like most pimpled adolescents, had a rather debatable sense of
humour and was overtly sexist, putting raunchy graffiti (FUK, SUK, LIK,
TIT, NIPL and a hard to find CUNT), including a stylised penis, all over
the picture. Rob Chapman describes it as:
a porn-mag photo of a topless woman encrypted with toilet-wall graffiti
daubs.
And Julian Palacios adds that the page reveals Barrett's:
misogynistic adolescent fear and a fascination with naked women.
In Will Shutes' excellent Barrett essay, that like all art essays
meanders between the sublime and the slightly ridiculous, he cleverly
remarks that the BOYS FUCK GIRL word permutations - on the same page -
form 'two tip-to-toe penises'.
BOYS FUCK GIRL
BOY FS UCK GIRL
BO FYUS CK GIRL
B FOUYCS K GIRL
F BUOCYK S GIRL
FU BCOK YS GIRL
FUC BK OYS GIRL
FUCK BOYS GIRL
FUCK BOY GS IRL
FUCK BO GYIS RL
FUCK B GOIYRS L
FUCK G BIORYL L
FUCK GI BROL YS
FUCK GIR BL OYS
FUCK GIRL BOYS
As if two penises isn't serious enough he has also the following to say
about the pin-up:
The voyeuristic theme evident in Fart Enjoy relates to the omnipresence
of the sexualized image, and is humorous in its deliberate childishness.
In Barrett's most prominent foray into Pop Art, he illustrates the
anatomy of an anonymous topless model with tears and glasses, snot,
spiders, a cyclist ascending her left breast, and some sort of discharge
from her 'NIPL'.
Shirley Anne Field by David Bailey, Playboy March 1966.
Beat Girl
For another observer the snot under her nose could also be a moustache,
the nipple discharge could be some sort of surrealistic fart (enjoyed or
not) and the anonymous topless model could be someone who ran for miss
Great Britain in 1955 and who played roles in the cult-horror movie Peeping
Tom (1960) and in the ultimate sixties sex comedy Alfie
(1966).
In 1963 Playboy
called this actress a sex siren who was:
for years exploited as English grist for run-of-the-mill pin-up roles,
until her portrayal of Sir Laurence Olivier's mistress in The
Entertainer proved she could deliver lines as well as show them.
She must have left an everlasting impression because in the March 1966
issue this 'perky, pretty Lancashire lass' was portrayed by none other
than the British photographer of the stars, David
Bailey. One of these pictures
is the one that was massacred by Syd Barrett for his Fart Enjoy booklet.
As a movie star Shirley
Anne Field disappeared in the mid seventies but eventually she
returned in My
Beautiful Laundrette (1985), stayed for 42 episodes in the Santa
Barbara soap (1987) and was last seen on the silver screen in the
2011 comedy The
Power Of Three. IMDB
lists her impressive career, Shirley Anne Field starred in 70 different
movie and TV productions (not counting individual episodes) in nearly 6
decades.
Time Lord Syd. Artwork: Felix Atagong.
Time Lord
Andrew Rawlinson writes
the Fart Enjoy booklet is probably from 1965.
I’m not sure about the exact date. I know where I was living, so that
places it between the end of 1964 and the summer of 1965. He was in
London (Tottenham Street I think, not Earlham Street) and I was in
Cambridge.
But unless somebody unequivocally proves that Syd Barrett really was a Time
Lord (now here's a daring subject for our satiric The
Anchor division, we might say) we seem to have a problem as the
David Bailey pictures of Shirley Anne Field date from March 1966 and not
from the year before.
How on Earth did Syd Barrett happen to insert a picture from a March
1966 Playboy into a 1965 (f)artwork?
All seems to turn around the exact moment in time when Syd Barrett moved
from Tottenham Street to Earlham Street. Mark Blake and others put this
in 1965 but Rob Chapman in A Very Irregular Head writes:
During the summer of 1966 Syd moved out of Tottenham Street and with his
new girlfriend, fashion model Lindsay Corner, took up residence in the
top-floor flat at 2 Earlham Street, just off Shaftesbury Avenue.
One chirping biographer doesn't make spring, especially not this one, so
isn't there another way to date Fart Enjoy?
Actually there is.
"Dear Roge" letter, Fart Enjoy.
Rogue Roger
Page 10 in the booklet has a transcript from a letter (postcard?) from
Syd's mother to her son. Some biographers call it a spoof although this,
nor the authenticity, can be proven. But made up or not, it contains
three interesting sentences.
I hope you are having a nice weekend. How did the group get on at
Essex? Shall we reckon to set off – Devon-wards – on Sat. 26th?
Let's start with the last line, the one that carries a date. Browsing
through calendars from nearly 50 years ago we can see there have only
been a few Saturdays the 26th between 1964 and 1966: two in 1964
(September and December), one in 1965
(June) and three in 1966
(February, March and November).
1964 Syd Barrett, as a member of The Hollerin' Blues, didn't
have that many gigs in 1964, and these were all around Cambridge. In the
autumn of that year he joined the proto-Floyd, who where probably still
called The Spectrum Five, but they only had about 3 concerts in London.
1965 Pink Floyd and/or The Tea Set had a slightly busier
schedule in 1965, but all in all there were only a dozen of gigs. None
of these were in Essex or happened around the only Saturday the 26th of
that year.
Playboy March 1966.
1966 "By early 1966 Pink Floyd's fortunes were taking a
dramatic turn for the better", writes Glenn Povey in Echoes, but frankly
their career only started to mushroom end of September. The Tea Set's
first claim for fame was when they were billed, thanks to Nick
Sedgwick, for three sets on a two-days festival on Friday the 11th
and Saturday the 12th of March 1966, next to real FAMOUS people and
bands. Nick Mason remembers:
The only gig that might have brought us to wider attention had been at
Essex University. At their rag ball, we shared the bill with the Swinging
Blue Jeans, who did appear, and Marianne
Faithfull who was billed as appearing – if she managed to return
from Holland in time. It didn’t sound hopeful. We were still called Tea
Set at the time although we must have given the impression of being in
transition to psychedelia, since in spite of having ‘Long
Tall Texan’ in our repertoire, where we all sang to the
accompaniment of acoustic guitars, somebody had arranged oil slides and
a film projection.
Roger Waters (as quoted in Palacios' Dark Globe):
‘We’d already become interested in mixed media,’ recalled Roger Waters.
‘Some bright spark there had given this paraplegic a film camera and
wheeled him round London filming his view. Now they showed it up on
screen as we played.’
The avant-garde movie lovers at the Church sometimes wonder if this
cinematographer wasn't an American who had recently moved to England.
Later he would play an important part in the London's Film-Makers'
Co-op, that grew out of film screenings at Better
Books. But looking into that would take us too far, actually.
The Essex University Rag Ball was the Floyd's first event to be
proud of and something Syd would have been bragging about to his mother
and friends. Not only was this their only Essex gig in the 1964 –
1966 period, but it also perfectly matches the 'spoof' letter in Fart
Enjoy.
I hope you are having a nice weekend.
Refers to the week after the Essex gig when Syd hypothetically received
the letter (around 19 March 1966).
How did the group get on at Essex?
Syd's mum asks about the concert of the week before, when The Tea Set
had their first breakthrough (12 March 1966).
Shall we reckon to set off – Devon-wards – on Sat. 26th?
Points to a date in the immediate future, Saturday the 26th of March
1966.
Bob Dylan in Playboy, March 1966.
Bob Dylan Schmooze
It's a shame EMI couldn't track down the owner of the copyright of the
woman with her boobies out which Barrett cut from a magazine. EMI chose
not to include it in the reproduced Fart Enjoy book in PATGOD.
So writes Neptune Pink Floyd on their Facebook
page, about a year ago. Well, now that the Holy Igquisition has
settled this matter, once and for all, EMI will have no excuse any more
not to include the complete Fart Enjoy booklet in - let's say - a 50
years anniversary Immersion set of Pink Floyd's first album.
We think we have gathered enough evidence to bring back the creation
date of the Fart Enjoy booklet from a two-years period to roughly one
week in 1966. The Church managed to identify the pin-up Syd Barrett drew Kilroy
on, as well as the photographer and the magazine it appeared in.
The only question that stays unanswered is: Why did Syd Barrett have
this particular Playboy?
Easy.
The Playboy of March 1966 not only had topless pictures of Shirley Anne
Field. Pages 41 to 44 and 138 to 142 make room for a 'candid
conversation with the iconoclastic idol of the folk-rock set'. Syd
Barrett, like all Cantabrigian beatniks, admired Bob Dylan and discussed
his records, he had written a parodic song
about him, and took Libby Gausden to the Royal Festival Hall on 17 May
1964 to see him.
If we can be sure of one thing, it is that Syd Barrett really
bought this Playboy for the interview.
Many thanks to: Anonymous, Giulio Bonfissuto, Mick Brown, Warren
Dosanjh, Rich Hall, Alexander Hoffmann, Keith Jordan, Göran Nyström,
Neptune Pink Floyd Forum, Vintage Erotica Forum. Update July
2017: images and some text. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above links): Atagong, Felix: Fasten
Your Anoraks, The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, 8
September 2007. Beecher, Russell & Shutes, Will: Barrett,
Essential Works Ltd, London, 2011, p. 165. (This book has the complete
Fart Enjoy.) Chapman, Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and
Faber, London, 2010, p. 62, 111. Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A
personal history of Pink Floyd, Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue,
p. 35. Palacios, Julian: Dark Globe, Plexus, London, 2010, p.
92, 98. Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink Floyd,
3C Publishing, 2008, p. 32, 48. Rawlinson, Andrew: Syd Barrett -
His Book @ Syd Barrett Research Society, 15 March 2009 (forum no
longer active). Rawlinson, Andrew: Syd
Barrett - His Book, 20 March 2009 (mirror). Willis,
Tim, Madcap, Short Books, London, 2002, p. 53-55. (This book has
a few pages of Fart Enjoy.)
The Birdie
Hop Facebook group has also a side project where people with a
certain arty je-ne-sais-quoi are trying to get something on the
rails. For the moment it is still vague and too preliminary to predict
what may come out of it, but there are some ideas floating around and
these tend to trigger other ideas, and perhaps one day it will surprise
the world.
Opel, 2014
In contradiction to the Reverend, Rich
Hall - one of Birdie's administrators and the creator of the amazing
tribute album Birdie
Hop and the Sydiots - didn't sit on his lazy ass while Alex was
frolicking with the girls around the British landscape (see part one of
this article: A
sunny afternoon with Iggy). He took Syd's Opel track and
added several guitar layers to the original version to make it sound a
bit more finished. Of course it still has the quirky singing, but Rich's
attempt is something of a definitive version and one that could be put
on any Syd Barrett compilation album to come.
Update 2016 06 17: Soundcloud deleted this version a while ago,
but it can be found on Facebook as well:
In Cambridge Alex had the opportunity to meet some people who already
had an advance copy of the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band
album that will come out any day now. Another reason to join Birdie Hop
is that you read and hear things first, straight from the horse's mouth,
so to speak. And, with Alex's blessing, we publish here what well could
be the very first review of this record in the entire world!
A big thanks to my friend and Punjabi brother Warren
Dosanjh who sent me the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band CD (I
had to look three times on the cover to write that correctly).
Of course, the sound and recording quality is not the best, but not as
bad as I feared. It is much better than the 1967 live recordings we have
of the early Pink Floyd. The main members Jack
Monck and Twink
do a great job in all songs, no doubt. The singer, Bruce Michael Paine,
makes some of the songs sound like a special performance of Uriah
Heep or Steamhammer
(obviously). The track listing is a collection of late fifties or early
sixties blues / rock 'n' roll / boogie tunes and a little bit of early
seventies hard rock as well.
I can only hear two guitars.
I hear the perfection of Fred
Frith in the first four songs and again in track 8 and 9, I´m not so
sure of #8 though. Frith is nearly a perfect guitarist and can almost
play nearly everything, nearly (lol)!
I definitively hear Syd Barrett in tracks 5 to 7. But he is not there
for just a little bit, he is almost dominating the songs. He is strong
and good and I´m sure he had practised a lot before, probably at home.
Syd doesn't has the perfection of Frith but he is full of ideas and he
is able to play parts that others can´t play or that others have not the
craziness to play these parts. But at other times he plays
conventionally and fits in perfectly with the song´s structures.
All in all this is much more than I had expected. I only listened to it
once, but I didn't want to withhold you of my opinion.
A last word. How we look at the quality of the performed songs has got a
lot to do with our viewpoints of today. Today we are spoiled by good
concerts and good audio productions, but I'm sure we would all have been
very happy to be there on the 27th of January 1972 in the Cambridge Corn
Exchange!
Perhaps my expectations were so low that I sound a little bit too
enthusiast now. But I am surprised by Syd´s guitar playing. I never
thought that he was in such a good shape as a guitar player. This lets
me believe that Twink is right and that the Stars concerts were far
better than what was written later by people who weren't there.
A detailed review with a full background story and an interview with
Twink will appear later on, simultaneously at the Church and Birdie Hop.
This is part two of Alexander's adventures in the UK, for part one, go
here: A
sunny afternoon with Iggy This is also a prequel of
our Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band article series: LMPTBB
Iggy Rose Memorial Card. Picture taken by David Stanford.
David Stanford:
It was so sad to be at the funeral. I can advise that her life was
celebrated in the manner I am sure she would have approved of. RIP sweet
Iggy Rose. ♥ ♥ ♥
Great news for these desolate autumn times. On Tuesday, 23 October 2018,
Nigel Young found a 1968 documentary, featuring none other than Iggy the
Eskimo. He was so friendly to warn the Church about his discovery.
Simultaneously Alex Hoffmann (from Birdie
Hop) and Antonio Jesús Reyes (from Solo
En Las Nubes) also informed the Reverend of this pretty spectacular
find. Let's have a closer look, shall we?
Iggy at Port Eliot, summer 1968. Iggy
at Port Eliot.
Hippies St Germans
“Hippies at the Port Eliot Estate in St Germans explain a happy hippy
way of life and are welcomed by the Earl.”
The full movie can be watched (for free) at the BFI archives, but
unfortunately it has been geo-blocked for users outside Great Britain,
but as these are the days of the interweb means and methods exist to
circumvent that: Hippies
St Germans. A short excerpt with only the Iggy bits and pieces
(direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tHaIiZFiNA).
Here is how the movie is described by BFI:
Peregrine Eliot aka from 1988 the tenth Earl of St Germans has opened
his estate to a community of hippies who seek an alternative way of
life. This dreamy film sees news reporter Dale Le Vack meet members of
the community and attempts to explore aspirations for centring and
pooling resources including giving up traditional living in the pursuit
of harmony, freedom, self-sufficiency and vegetarianism.
This sounds all very idyllic, but the hippies in the movie, although
unwashed, weren't really hippies to begin with. Except the one we call a
rose, obviously.
Henrietta Partridge, née: Henrietta Garnett.
Class struggle
It has been stated before that the psychedelic in-crowd of the
mid-sixties were not a part of the proletariat, although they liked to
mingle with ordinary work-folk like – let's say – Mick
Jagger, to show that they were not snobby. It even was mentioned in
a 1965 Daily Express column from William Hickey:
There's no harm these days in knowing a Rolling Stone... And pop people
do not seem to mind who they mix with. Some of their best friends, in
fact, are fledglings from the upper classes.
Ordinary men – despite the social, cultural and sexual revolution this
was still mainly a patriarchal clique – who managed to throw their
working class shackles away and entered the progressive ranks of society
were embraced in aristocratic circles as a long lost brother returning
from a spiritual voyage to Shangri-La. Actor Terence Stamp, originally a
working-class boy, 'gleefully expressed his delight that'...
...some yobbo like me could get into the Saddle Room [a hip nightclub]
and dance with the Duchess of Bedford's daughter, and get hold of her,
and get taken down to Woburn Abbey to hang out for a long weekend and
have dinner in the Canaletto Room.(Taken from the very relevant and
informative The
wild Sloanes who made the Sixties happen, by John Walsh.)
“Dexter loved the attention of the 'aristos'.”, Iggy told the Church. He
entered the posh social circles by befriending the Ormsby-Gore sisters,
Jane, Victoria and Alice
(aka the Harlechs) and David
Mlinaric, the British-Austro-Hungarian interior designer who had,
among his clients, Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Lord Rotschild. Jeff
Dexter:
The people around Granny's were rich kids, beautiful people, but that
was no barrier for me. They were just people making things happen.
Though they had the advantage that they could get a shop together and
set up businesses. (DITL, P221)
Barry Miles had about the same opinion:
The music business was the main way in which the working class became
involved. The people who were involved with fashion or art tended to be
much more upper class. (DITL, P92)
Unknown hippie.
Baghdad House
One place to meet, during the day, was the Baghdad House (or BDH) on
Fulham Road where you sat on cushions and could drink a yoghurt with
honey and smoke some hash downstairs. Barry Miles notes that the place
was difficult to raid because of its many important visitors: Beatles,
Stones and their aristocratic friends.
Iggy, to her own account, never was a part of the London elite in-crowd,
but mingled with them at different occasions. This came naturally to
her, Iggy originated from a well-to-do upper middle-class family who
tried to raise her as a well-mannered ladylike debutante. As a child she
had several private tutors who taught her the piano, violin, harp, flute
and classical guitar. She had a voice coach learning her how to sing.
She took ballet classes with a 'madame who was a sadist throwback from
the Gestapo', as Iggy once vividly described to us. All these lessons
were to no avail as she was a bratty stubborn kid with a mind of her
own. Iggy wanted freedom and if that meant running away from home at 14,
so be it. She could easily have entered the elite to live a protected
and secure life, she certainly had the manners and – frankly – the looks
for it, but freedom was much more important to her than having a full
stomach and a bed to sleep in, trapped in a golden cage.
Mark Palmer.
Melting Pot
Before we get to the travelling would-be hippies, let's have some extra
name-dropping.
Sir Charles
Mark Palmer, 5th Baronet (whatever that means), whose godmother
happened to be queen Elizabeth II, opened the English Boy modelling
agency in 1965. It was located above the Quorum store, from Ossie
Clark and Alice Pollock, who asked Iggy to model some clothes on the
catwalk. (She probably was too insecure and refused.)
On another floor of the same building lived Brian Jones with his
girlfriend (and model) Melanie Susan 'Suki' Potier (often written as
Poitier). But that didn't stop him from inviting Iggy Rose from time to
time for some quality entertainment.
Michael
Rainey originally was a designer for Quorum, but he opened his own
shop Hung On You in 1965. Iggy wasn't the only one who found him
an Adonis. Anita Pallenberg:
Michael was just so wonderful and so handsome. I think everybody I knew
had a crush on him in those days. (RSG, P192)
Unknown hippie.
English Boy
Rainey was married to Jane Teresa Denyse Ormsby-Gore, the Lady
Jane from the Rolling Stones song and daughter of David
Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech, a conservative politician and
diplomat. Iggy Rose knew the couple pretty welll:
Michael Rainey owned a men's clothes shop, and there was a modelling
agency called English Boy. I mixed with that set. The models at that
agency were out of this world.
For some pictures of the English Boy models you can go to this page
and it is no wonder that Iggy felt at ease with so many beauties around
her.
Some male models of English Boy. Alice
Ormsby-Gore and EC.
Tears in Heaven
Jane's younger sister was the 'tragically beautiful' Alice Ormsby-Gore,
but she and Iggy didn't get along as they had been dating the same
guitar player for some time. One night - in 1968 - at The Speakeasy
Iggy was on the dance floor, 'lost in music and totally entranced', when Eric
Clapton arrived with 17 year old Alice Ormsby-Gore by his side.
Almost four decades later, when Iggy told this anecdote to the Church,
she was still not proud of her behaviour that night.
She threw one of her legendary temper tantrums and had to be removed
from the nightclub. At first another guitarist hugged her and tried to
calm her down by softly chanting hare krishna. But Iggy was too
angry and refused to leave the Speak with him. A baffled George
Harrison could only shake his head at so many stubbornness. At last
one of the managers (Roy Flynn or Mike Carey, probably) escorted Iggy to
his office where she cooled down with a hot cup of tea, sitting on the
floor sobbing.
Unknown hippie.
Bad Love
Through our conversations with Iggy we learned that she had quite a
crush for the alleged lady-killer. After their breakup he denied that it
had ever happened and we wonder if this has ever been described in one
of the many Clapton biographies.
Perhaps it was all for the better. It is rumoured that Eric Clapton did
not treat his fiancé well during their five year relationship and after
the breakup he said he had never loved her. Alice followed Eric in his
heroin addiction and while Clapton could recover Alice died of an
overdose in 1995.
Clive Palmer, founding member of the Incredible String Band.
Lambton
Other friends of Iggy, through Jeff Dexter, were the eldest Lambton
sisters: “Beatrice took care of me for a while.” Iggy probably meant
Lady Beatrix Nevill (née: Lambton, 1949) who had four sisters: Lucinda
(1943), Rose Diana (1952), Anne Mary (1954) and Isabella (1958). Their
father was Lord Antony
Claud Frederick Lambton, an MP who was caught in 1973 in a (minor)
political scandal after he was found in bed with two prostitutes and
some drugs.
Iggy probably only knew the two older sisters Beatrix and Lucinda, as
the others were far too young. There is not a lot more that can be said
as they apparently stayed out the gossip pages, at least in the sixties.
Lucinda
wrote several books, was a photographer and an acclaimed TV broadcaster.
Her younger sister Anne
Lambton was a confidantes of Andy Warhol and starred in the Sex
Pistols biography Sid and Nancy. In 2013 the family sued each other over
the £12 million estate of their deceased father.
Peregrine Eliot.
Port Eliot
The age of Aquarius was one were many youngsters were looking for an
alternative lifestyle, an alternative philosophy, an alternative
religion. In some cases this meant throwing those restraining British
Christian traditions overboard, replacing these with equally restricting
oriental ones and paradoxically claiming this new set of standards was
liberating. Some aristocrats sought it closer to home. Keith Richards,
in his autobiography, Life, remembers:
There were a lot of Pre-Raphaelites running around in velvet with
scarves tied to their knees, like the Ormsby-Gores, looking for the Holy
Grail, the Lost Court of King Arthur, UFOs and ley lines.
Iggy Rose visited the castle at Port
Eliot (St Germans, Cornwall) with Michael Rainey and some other
people of the smart set. Among them Henrietta
Moraes (née: Audrey Wendy Abbott) who had been an equally
free-spirited woman and junkie, although a decade and a half before. She
was the muse and inspiration for many artists of the Soho subculture,
including Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Maggi Hambling. Iggy the
Eskimo:
There's a place in Cornwall called Port Elliot. A bloke I knew called
Peregrine has a castle there. For the May Day celebrations a party of
his friends would gather round the village, which upset the Morris
dancers. Peregrine's beautiful ladies were sitting astride the horses
that were adorned with flower garlands, dressed as dames from King
Arthur's Court.
The above probably means that Iggy visited the castle more than once, as
she was there with Michael Rainey and - later - with Mark Palmer's gypsy
caravan.
Master and Servants
The master of the estate (as he is so accurately described by his
grovelling interviewer) was Peregrine Eliot, 10th Earl of St Germans. He
was a partner in Seltaeb,
the Beatles merchandising company from the sixties. He was married to
Jacquetta Jean Frederika Lampson, a daughter of a well known British
diplomat. Jacquetta had been a model for Lucian Freud and performed in
the 1967 movie Echoes
of Silence. Also present in the documentary is her sister Roxana
'Bunty' Rose Catherine Naila Lampson. She was married to Ian Ross, who
co-founded Radio Caroline.
As the summer of 1967 slid into autumn, things paled. Hippie and
flower-child fashions became a high-street style rather than a statement
of individualism. Sporting flowers in your hair or marigolds drawn in
biro on your cheeks became passé. Many boutiques closed down. Michael
Rainey and Jane Ormsby-Gore embarked on a spiritual quest. 'We were
seriously into soul-seeking and going on fasts and meditating,' she said
later. 'We left London, sold everything, gave away everything, and went
to live in Gozo [Malta, FA].'
Another aristocrat had a different idea. Sir Mark Palmer seriously
wanted to find the Holy Grail. He dressed as the archetypal druid from
the Asterix cartoons and travelled through Britain in a horse-drawn
gypsy caravan, taking with him some like-minded souls like musician Dave
Tomlin from the guerrilla underground band The Giant Sun
Trolley who played at the legendary '14th Hour Technicolor Dream'
(later they evolved into The Third Ear Band).
Maldwyn Thomas, an English Boy model, was there as well from the start:
I was round at Mark's flat in Radnor Walk and he said, 'I'm going to
drop out, do you want to come?' (…) It wasn't luxurious travelling in a
caravan. Quite the opposite. (…) We bought a dung-cart, a sort of tipper
cart. We put a tilt on it and wrapped it in canvas and it was very, very
primitive. Mark bought this horse, a huge black and white mare. That was
the start – and we set off. (DITL, P216)
The caravan was far from luxurious, but – for some reason or another –
the idea appealed to many people, although some just visited the
traveller's band for a weekend, like Brian Jones and his girlfriend Suki.
Iggy at Port Eliot, summer 1968. Michael
Rainey.
Aristo-copy-cats
Mark Palmer wasn't the only one to roam through England in a
horse-driven caravan. Barry Miles took over the lease of the Michael and
Jane Rainey house when they decided to move. Its living room had a
yellow carpet and that (allegedly) inspired Donovan to write Mellow
Yellow. Before they relocated to Malta they also went on a Holy Grail
quest.
They were into ley lines and flying saucers and that sort of cuts across
all sorts of class barriers; When Jane and Michael left London they went
in a sort of gypsy caravan travelling along ley lines to Wales with
motorcycle out-riders. This is a sort of eccentricity you've always had
among English aristocrats. They're famous for being very cuckoo, a lot
of them. (RSG, P237)
Unknown hippie.
And Iggy
A bunch of aristocrat hippies, travelling along the ley lines looking
for UFOs and celebrating unsolicited sex. Who could refuse such an
offer? Certainly not Iggy:
There was a glorious summer where I travelled around in a beautifully
painted real-life gypsy caravan, pulled by a magnificent cart horse. At
first I did not realise who Mark Palmer was. I thought he and his gang
were hippies like me. Mark was my knight in shining armour, who took me
under his wings.
Mark Palmer continued his quest till the mid-seventies. He and his gang
of rich libertine new-age followers overwintered at Stargroves, a manor
house at East Woodhay (Hampshire), owned by Mick Jagger.
So there you have it, the story of Iggy and her summer trip on a gypsy
caravan, as documented by news reporter Dale Le Vack.
Iggy at Port Eliot, summer 1968. Iggy
at Port Eliot.
A last word...
It is not sure why Iggy left the commune, probably after the summer of
1968, but maybe her aversion of vegetarianism had something to do with
it.
I have done the hippy commune... with the lentils and mantra and bongo
bashing and tuneless flute playing. There was lots of plonk and
unspiritual drugs... I'm not a diabetic! I just craved for the bloodiest
steak.
That's our Iggy like we know her. She never could stay long at one place.
A tale of two Henrietta's
A follow-up article has been published in 2020 with additional
information: A
Tale of Two Henriettas
Our Tumblr page has got some more pictures: Port
Eliot. If you recognise some of the people portraited in the
documentary, let us know!
Note: some sources claim it's Ormsby Gore, without the hyphen, but as
Wikipedia puts it with one, i.c. Ormsby-Gore, that's the spelling we've
used for this article.
Many thanks to: Jeff Dexter, Alex Peter Hoffmann, Jay Jeer, London
in the 60s & 70s, Sophie Partridge, Antonio Jesús Reyes, The
Iggy Rose Archives, Mim Scala, Greg Selby, Nigel Young. ♥ Libby ♥
Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the above internet links): Green, Jonathon: Days
In The Life, Pimlico, London, 1998, p.187-190., p.92, 216, 221. Levy,
Shawn: Ready Steady Go!, Broadway Books, New York, 2003,
p.192,237. Miles, Barry: In The Sixties, Rocket 88, London,
2017 (updated version), p.298. Miles, Barry: London Calling,
Atlantic Books, London, 2010, p.213, 263.
We have written this before. Just when you think that there will be no
more Iggy the Eskimo news, she hits you hard, surprising the
fans, posthumously reaching from those Elysian
Fields where there is a special psychedelic corner for free spirits
who are not square, we are sure of that. It is her way of telling us:
don’t you forget about me.
Be assured, Iggy, we won’t.
Undercover Agents
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit is a cabinet of curiosities, situated
in Belgium, and its most precious objects have been brought in by an
international network of Iggy admirers.
Before the Church started in 2008, all that was known about Iggy – with
the exception of the Madcap photo sessions – was that she could be found
in an NME article of November 1966. (See: Bend
It!)
2008. DollyRocker, from the USA, recognised Iggy in a Rank Organisation
documentary. This more or less triggered the start of this blog. (See: IN
Gear)
2012. PhiPhi Chavana, from Hong Kong, found a picture of Iggy in a Music
Maker magazine, belonging to a collector in Sydney (Australia). (See: Iggy
- a new look in festivals)
2015. Jacinta Start, Australia, was pleasantly surprised to be
confronted with Iggy’s picture, originally from the Holmes-Lebel
archives in France. (See: Iggy
- another festival, another look)
2018. We were almost simultaneously warned by Nigel Young (GB), Antonio
Jesùs (Spain) and Alex Hoffmann (Germany) that Iggy was in a
documentary, with an alternative bunch of aristocratic hippies,
travelling in a horse-carriage from London to Port Eliot, St. Germans.
(See: Paint
Your Wagon: Iggy movie unearthed!)
2020. On the first spring day of 2020 a message arrived from
Rostov-On-Don, Russia, to inform the Church that an unknown Iggy picture
had mysteriously appeared on a Russian social network.
Here is the story… so far.
This Tumblr may contain sensitive media.
Remember Russia
On the 21st of March the Reverend received an incoming message from Vita
Fillipova, who is a charming acquaintance since the Late
Night Syd Barrett Discussion Room Forum days, where she was known as
(Green Eyed) Betsy.
On the social network VK
(short for Vkontakte), the number one site in Russia, she had found a post
of user CBGB with a more than intriguing picture attached. “Could it be
Iggy?” she asked us.
The post had been there since the first of March 2019 and Google
searches initially led to nothing. Lucky there are several other search
engines around and Yandex,
not coincidentally a Russian one as well, found the picture on three
different Tumblr
blogs and, good for us, in a better quality. From there it could be
traced back to its original uploader: Always
Retro, who posted
it somewhere in 2018.
Tumbling Down
Unfortunately, since the big porn
breakdown from end 2018 Tumblr has become a shadow of its former
self. If a Tumblr blog has been defined as ‘sensitive’, whatever that
means, it becomes virtually impossible to explore it. Although certainly
not NSFW
Always Retro could only be opened in private mode, which means that
looking for a specific date or tag was made impossible. Searching for
the picture was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
It took some extra digging and quite some luck and finally the source
could be found in a gallery on ImageVenue,
an anonymous image-sharing website.
Amateur Photographer, August 1970.
Amateur Photographer
Amateur
Photographer, as the name suggests, is a British photography
magazine that exists since 1884, one year before Kodak marketed the film
roll. It still exists today focusing on digital and analogue photography.
Issue 142 of the fifth of August 1970 had an article about 'Glamour On
The Beach' which has always been a pretext to have some mild eroticism.
The cover girl could possibly be actress Ann
Sidney, aka Miss World 1964. She was pictured by Ken Howard who
worked for several photo magazines. For the article itself, pictures of Raquel
Welch and Alexandra
Bastedo were used. (Although the magazine is called Amateur
Photographer most of the pictures inside are made by professionals.)
Starting on page 28 is an article with the title 'London Salon 1970 –
the Top Print'. It has a picture of minor celebrity Dania Faber
(Montez). She was a pin-up model from Bombay who looked for fame and
fortune in London, trying to become an actress. About a dozen pictures
have survived from her and in the mid-seventies she disappeared
completely from the radar. It was thanks to her picture (and to a
collector's forum) that we could trace the person who owns and scanned
the Amateur Photographer magazine.
And, as you have probably guessed by now, one of those scans contains a
picture of a woman who looks uncannily like Iggy the Eskimo, taken by
the photographer Feri Lukas.
Iggy, by Feri Lukas. Amateur Photographer, July 1970. Skinheads,
by Feri Lukas.
Feri Lukas
Not much is known of Feri Lukas, other than that he was a photo
journalist for the music magazine Record
Mirror, under the wings of the world famous photographer Dezo
Hoffmann, who began working for the magazine in 1955. Lukas
certainly worked for Record Mirror in 1966 as he is mentioned in a Sonny
& Cher article 'You
Lucky People' from the third of September.
An internet search for Lukas only results in a couple of pictures. A few
of mods and punks in the seventies, one of Muhammad
Ali and one of an old man sitting on a bench that can be found on
several religious inspired blogs. That is all there is to find. Dezo
Hoffmann’s studio had different (rock) photographers who became famous
afterwards, but Feri unfortunately isn’t one of them.
Man on a bench by Feri Lukas.
Birdie Hop
It doesn’t need to be said that the slightly fantastical Facebook group Birdie
Hop (if you look up who started it you’ll understand why) was
immediately buzzing with dozens of reactions from Syd Barrett and Iggy
fans. (Several über-cool members also warned the Church about the
picture.)
As always reactions were divided between believers and non-believers.
“The lips and eyes are off.” said one. “Their proportions may look
similar at first glance, but there are differences as well. I don't
think it is her.”
Comparison of two 'Iggy' Pictures. Left: Amateur Photographer picture by
Feri Lukas. Right: 'Pocahontas' picture from 1967 (mirrored). Concept:
Brynn Petty @ Birdie Hop.
But others had the following to say, after they compared the
‘Pocahontas’ picture with this one: “She has the same makeup under the
eyes. (…) The face shape is round like hers, and the eyes look the same
to me. (…) It’s so hard to say but I'm gonna guess yes.”
And: “This just convinced me more! The mouth, the slight overbite, the
round nose, the round face. Exactly the same (to me).”
Amateur Photographer Caption.
But what does the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit has to say about this
all?
Well, we are convinced this is Iggy, but up till now there is no proof
and any evidence is – like American lawyers love to say –
circumstantial. But as usual, Iggy will have the last word.
The Iggy Archives
The Reverend delved into his archive that contains transcripts of
conversations with Iggy. One day, in 2011, we started talking about her
modelling career and the people who shot her. Iggy Rose:
You should get in touch with the archive department of Melody Maker to
track down those 2 photographers. I am pretty sure they were acquainted
with my wonderful guardian angel who was freelancing for all the top
music papers.
At the time this sentence was a mystery to us, but now it’s starting to
get clear. According to Iggy there were three different photographers
who took her pictures for different (music) magazines. Could it be that
Feri Lukas was one of those, perhaps even the man she described as her
‘guardian angel’?
Stalin invades Europe. Original: Leslie Gilbert Illingworth.
East vs West
Here is what she had to say about him.
He fled his native motherland when Communist Russia invaded it with the
blessing of America and what was once Great Britain.
The above sentence is rather important for our investigation, as it
describes the photographer as someone with East-European roots.
Later on there were different uprisings in the east. Iggy could be
referring to the Hungarian
Revolution of 1956 that was stopped when the Soviet army invaded
Budapest. Approximatively 200 000 Hungarians fled as refugees. Other
uprisings took place in East
Germany (1953), Poland
(1956) and Czechoslovakia
(1968, but by then Feri Lukas was already in Great Britain).
Roots
Feri,
short for Ferenc,
is a name from Hungary. Although it roots can also be found in Croatia
and (old) Germany.
Lukas
(or Lúkas, Lukaš, Lukáš...) is pretty well established in Hungary. The
surname can also be found in Czechia, Germany, Lithuania, Poland,
Slovakia,... These countries (minus one: West Germany) were put under
Russian hegemony after the second world war.
We can be pretty sure that Feri Lukas was Hungarian, or at least from
the part of Europe that was behind the iron
curtain.
(It may, or may not, be a coincidence but Feri Lukas’ boss Dezo Hoffmann
was born in the Kingdom of Hungary, in a region that later became
Czechoslovakia and that is now Slovakia.)
Conclusion
It is time to put two and two together.
In a chat from 2011, Iggy talked about a freelancing music magazine
photographer with East European roots
In a photo magazine from 1970 a picture of a woman who looks exactly
like Iggy is found.
The picture is from a photographer, with an obvious East European
name, who happened to be a photographer for a music magazine in the
late sixties.
Needless to say this is enough circumstantial evidence to convince us.
The girl in the picture must be Iggy.
Iggy in 1967. Picture: Feri Lukas?
More from Iggy
Once Iggy started talking there was no way stopping her. So it is no
wonder she had more things to say about Feri Lukas, during that chat in
2011.
Anyway he lived in Earls Court, at the gay end. I didn’t have a clue and
who cares. He was my protector and provider and took thousands of the
most stunning pics. He introduced me to top agents, Ready Steady Go and
took me to the first Glastonbury festival and the Isle of Wight.
He would always take pictures of me as well. I wish I could remember
which festival or what music paper where he had got me on the front
page, but I do remember I had plaits and a band round my forehead... I
looked like Pocahontas, the red Indian squaw.
That is the picture that was taken at the 1967 National Jazz, Pop,
Ballads and Blues Festival at Windsor. (See: Iggy
- a new look in festivals)
Later on he introduced me to top modelling agencies and trendy
photographers. I even got to meet the great David Puttman for a Camay
soap TV-ad where I was lying in a bath with lots of bubbles. We spent
ages in his office giggling and laughing while he tried to apologise. I
was the wrong type as the soap company was looking for big blue-eyed
blondes like Twiggy or Jean [Shrimpton].
So there we have it. Not only a new Iggy picture has been unearthed, but
we may also have found who was behind Iggy’s legendary Pocahontas
picture.
Murray Head.
A last word from Iggy
Iggy also remembered that a good friend of Feri Lukas (if she was still
talking about the same man) was ‘the singer of the musical Hair’, Murray
Head. Just another celebrity she encountered.
To access the photographer’s studio you had to climb on a ladder,
something Iggy did multiple times. Probably that studio was just below
the roof of the house. Bit by bit that place was converted into a huge
Iggy shrine.
I remember one photographer who had covered a whole studio wall with
pics of me. There was a whole batch of rather naughty ones. I hope they
will never be discovered.
Please excuse us, dear Iggy, but we would like to hope the opposite. For
historic research, obviously.
The Church wishes to thank: Bafupo, CBGB, Drosophila, Vita Filippova,
Sara Harp, Alexander Peter Hoffmann, Elizabeth J., Lisa Newman, Old Man
Peace, Joe Perry, Brynn Petty, Catherine Provenzano and the many
contributors at Birdie Hop. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
That the internet can be a dark dangerous place is something we all know
all too well. But once in a while, it sends a positive message around, a
message of love, to quote Rich
Hall in the song 'The
Reverend', a song he wrote about Iggy The Eskimo. This will probably
be the most relevant post in our twelve years history and Syd Barrett
will not be mentioned once.
Mizoram, India
There appears to be an active Mizo community on the internet. The state
of Mizoram
lies in the North-Eastern part of India,
bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh. It has about 1,100,000 citizens (2011
statistics).
After the independence from India (1947) it was not sure if the Lushai
Hills would be annexed by Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India or even
become an independent country, but in the end, it was incorporated in
the union of India, which did not treat it respectfully, to put it
euphemistically.
Mizo National Front uprising
For decades there were political and military troubles, with an armed
uprising in 1966 and brutal countermeasures from India. Slowly some
peaceful agreements were made and since 1987 Mizoram is a state of
India, meaning it has its own government.
Iggy the Inuit Mizo
Probably by accident someone of the Mizo community stumbled upon a post
of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. In our obituary
for Iggy, we wrote that her ‘Indian’ roots were in Mizoram and not
Pakistan as was generally believed.
This was shared on Mizo social networking groups where it was picked up
by none other than Iggy’s relatives. It created quite a buzz, went viral
and all of a sudden messages arrived on Instagram,
YouTube
and Facebook,
asking the Church for more information and pleading us to bring them in
contact with Iggy’s siblings. Which obviously, we did.
Isolationism
Contact with Iggy’s parents was lost in February 1966 when Mizoram was
plunged into an insurgency, also known as the Mizo
National Front uprising. The central Indian government retaliated
hard and restricted and censored all information coming in or going out
of the district of Mizoram. All letters going through the national
postal service were intercepted by the government and either censored or
destroyed. As there was no digital communication in those days the
Mizoram community was plunged into virtual isolation for nearly three
decades.
Contact lost
When the situation normalised the Mizo family branch searched
frantically for Iggy’s parents, going through Havant
Council, Hampshire (where her parents used to live) and the UK's
Ministry of Defence (as her father was in the military), but to no avail.
Four decades later, in 2021, the search was still going on, lead by
Iggy's cousin Thana. His mother, now 93 years old, is Iggy’s aunt from
his mother’s side.
Iggy’s mother, Angela (or Angelina) Chawngpuii married major Harry
Charlton Joyce, a British army officer serving in India during and
immediately after India’s independence. They had three children: Evelyn
(better known as Iggy), Stephen and Elizabeth Anne.
Instagram Message.
Laldawngliani
In our obituary from 2017, we revealed Iggy’s indigenous name, but it
seems we had it wrong. Iggy told us, years ago, that her name was
Laldowliani, but as we couldn’t find any trace of that we simplified it
to Laldingliani which seemed more common.
Many of Iggy’s family members have written to us that it is, in fact, Laldawngliani.
If we have learned one thing through the ages, it is that one should
never ever doubt Iggy. We can hear her roaring laugh, followed by: "I
TOLD YOU SO, FELIX!"
Chaltlang
Iggy’s great-grandfather Thangphunga was the chieftain of three
villages, including Chaltlang, now a suburb of Aizawl,
Mizoram’s capital. The chieftainship was abolished by the Indian
government when they annexed Mizoram, which had been an autonomous
region before (but ruled by the British after the mid-nineteenth
century).
As such Iggy’s family was held in great respect. Iggy’s
great-grandmother, Thangpuilali was the daughter of another chieftain,
Savunga Sailo.
Iggy’s relatives will have many more tales to tell, but these obviously
have to stay in the family. What we can share, and we hope that nobody
will mind, are some pictures that were unknown until now.
Most of them will also be published as well, in a better resolution, on
our daily Tumblr
using the Mizoram
tag.
Pictures
All pictures courtesy of Iggy's family, in Mizoram and the UK.
Aunt Chawngmawii. Elizabeth. Grandmother and her sisters. Three generations, including baby Iggy. Great-grandfather Thangphunga. Iggy and her brother. Iggy and her brother. Iggy's mother. Three sisters. Parents. Parents. RD Leta with wife Ngurtaiveli in 1919. Wedding Picture.
Many thanks to Elizabeth Joyce, Hnamte Thanchungnunga, Noeeeayo
(Rinnungi Pachuau), Racheliebe (Chha Dok Mi), Rosang Zuala, Tnama
Hnamte, VL Zawni. The Mizu online community: Ajay dep Thanga, Din
Nyy, Elvee milai, Euisoo's left sock, Hmazil, Kima Sailo, Lalrin Liana,
Lzi Dora Hmar, Mact mizoram, Mafela ralte, Panjee chhakchhuak, Park
Yoongi, Ramtea Zote123, Rinapautu Pautu, Zolad… and all those we may
have forgotten. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Iggy by legendary Pink Floyd photographer Vic Singh, 2015.
Part 6 of our Mizoram newspaper cuttings.
Last but not least: TOI. Wikipedia: The
Times of India is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and
digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the
third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest selling
English-language daily in the world.
It is the oldest English-language newspaper in India, and the
second-oldest Indian newspaper still in circulation, with its first
edition published in 1838. It is nicknamed as "The Old Lady of Bori
Bunder", and is an Indian "newspaper of record".
Near the beginning of the 20th century, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of
India, called The Times of India "the leading paper in Asia". In 1991,
the BBC ranked The Times of India among the world's six best newspapers.
Chandrima Banerjee published Pink Floyd Muse Iggy 'the Inuit' had
Mizo roots.
TOI+ Pink Floyd muse Iggy 'the Inuit' had Mizo roots Chandrima
Banerjee.
All contact lost during Mizo uprising, one line in fan blog reunites
family after 60 years
Whenever Evelyn 'Iggy' Rose was asked about her origins, she would
mysteriously refer to "the Himalayas", no more. She was muse to Pink
Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett, the naked cover girl of his debut album
and his lover. Seen at Jimi Hendrix's UK debut, in an Anthony Stern
film, and in a cult British magazine New Musical Express' (NME) feature,
her world was one of musicians, artists and psychedelia. When her
mixed-race appearance was exoticised in the London of the 'bos, she gave
the name "Eskimo" to an NME photographer as a joke and another origin
story stuck – Iggy "the Eskimo" or Iggy "the Inuit”. Now, four years
after her death, the pieces of the puzzle have finally come together –
the charming socialite of the Swinging London was actually from the
hills of Mizoram.
"Iggy's Mizo name was Laldawngliani," Rosangzuala, 48, whose great
grandmother and Iggy's grandmother were sisters, told TOI. “I had been
looking for Iggy and our England family since 2008. I joined Facebook to
look for them. But nothing turned up ... Days ago, I saw a post in a
local Mizoram Facebook group which mentioned a blog which said Iggy 'the
Inuit' might be a Mizo ... If not for Iggy's relationship with Syd
Barrett, we might not have found them. I thank Pink Floyd fans for
helping us reunite the family." Iggy's mother Chawngpuii and her
sisters. One of them, Chawngmawii, is 93 and lives in Kolasib
What Rosangzuala and his family knew, and many did not, was this –
Iggy's great-grandfather Thangphunga was a chieftain of three Mizoram
villages now consolidated as Chaltlang, and her mother Chawngpuii (her
English name was Angela) had married British Army officer Harry Charlton
Joyce who was serving in India and had then left for Yemen, followed by
England. "Her father was posted with the Royal Engineers," said
Rosangzuala. "He was a Major when he married Chawngpuii."
Iggy's great-grandfather Thangphunga was a chieftain of three Mizoram
villages
In 1966, what was then the Mizo district and would later become the
state of Mizoram was caught in a struggle for autonomy. Letters coming
into the state would be examined by the government and, many believe,
destroyed. “The last time we received a letter from Iggy's father, he
was a Brigadier. After that, all communication stopped."
Around this time, Iggy was attending art school, meeting Eric Clapton,
Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Keith Moon, and attending counterculture
concerts like the '14 Hour Technicolour Dream', headlined by Pink Floyd,
says the first extensive profile of the socialite by British music
journalist Mark Blake in 2011, before she started living with Syd
Barrett.
Years passed, and though her family in Mizoram knew about her, they
could not figure out how to get in touch with their relatives in
England. "Iggy's younger aunt, Chawngmawii, is 93. She lives in Kolasib
(along with two of Iggy's first cousins). Iggy's elder aunt used to
visit us often but she died years ago. I had promised her I would find
them some day," said Rosangzuala. The last place they knew Iggy's
parents lived was Havant, so they contacted the Borough Council there.
It didn't help. Then, they wrote to the UK's defence ministry, hoping
the military ties might throw up a lead. It didn't.
The Facebook post Rosangzuala saw now finally established a trail. It
was a single line in a 2017 obituary - she died a day before turning 70
– in a blog called The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit (which replaced
“Inuit" with “Mizo" later) which had resurfaced on Facebook: "Iggy's
mother, so was confirmed to us, wasn't from Pakistan, but from Mizoram,
situated at the North-East of India, sharing borders with Bangladesh and
Myanmar."
Rosangzuala got in touch with the blog post's author. "He was called
Felix. He helped us contact Iggy's family in England online,"
Rosangzuala said. "Iggy's cousin Thana has connected with her brother,
Stephen. He has a Mizo name, too."
Many thanks to the Mizoram online community! ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Iggy by legendary Pink Floyd photographer Vic Singh, 2015.
Part 5 of our Mizoram newspaper cuttings.
The
Nort-Eastern Chronicle (TNEC) is a Digital Media Agency
headquartered in Guwahati, Assam. The Agency is a (NEWS) worthy bytes
curator and storytelling medium for the region and the globe! They
wrote: Pink Floyd Founding Member Syd Barrett had a relation with
Mizoram; All you need to know.
Pink Floyd Founding Member Syd Barrett had a relation with Mizoram; All
you need to know.
(Text version)
Pink Floyd Founding Member Syd Barrett had a relation with Mizoram; All
you need to know by Editorial
The past holds many interesting stories, and one such tale brought a
Mizo family in contact with their long-lost relative three years after
her death. Surprisingly enough, the relative turned out to be Iggy the
Eskimo - the Girl who captured the spirit of the '60s.
The one-time girlfriend of Syd Barrett, the founding member of Pink
Floyd, happens to be born of a Mizo mother and a British father. She was
born as Evelyn Joyce but was most commonly known as 'Iggy the Eskimo'
and 'Iggy the Inuit'. Her long dark hair, lovely Asian features, button
nose, and baby face captured the eyes of the London public.
As per reports, it has come to light that Iggy Rose had a Mizo mother
named Chawngpuii, while Iggy was born somewhere in present-day Pakistan.
She did her schooling in India and Aden before moving to England. Her
entry into the spotlight was as abrupt as her disappearance from it.
Only after the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit launched a mission to bring
her back four decades later, they connected with the maternal side of
her family in Mizoram.
Iggy's mother had lost contact with her family in 1966 during the Mizos'
Uprising. Rosangliana, one of Iggy's relatives in Mizoram, said, "After
Mizoram returned to normalcy following the 1986 peace accord, we resumed
the search for Iggy's parents, going through Havant Council Hampshire
and the UK's Ministry of Defence, but to no avail."
After they came across a post about Iggy on the internet, they managed
to connect to her family in London. Her brother and sister were excited
to have found the other half of their family. Iggy fan page was
rechristened as Iggy the Mizo following the discovery.
Many thanks to the Mizoram online community! ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Iggy by legendary Pink Floyd photographer Vic Singh, 2015.
Part 4 of our Mizoram newspaper cuttings.
TIME8
is a digital news medium from Northeast India, ushering a revolution in
terms of news collection, unbiased storytelling and fearless journalism
powered by raw energy of youth with the tenacity of seasoned
journalists. They offer an extensive newsfeed covering politics, policy,
sports, entertainment, fashion, art and wellness and of course, web
culture.
And what did they publish about Iggy? Surprise! Pink Floyd’s founding
member Syd Barrett’s muse roots discovered in Mizoram.
Pink Floyd’s founding member Syd Barrett’s muse roots discovered in
Mizoram.
(Text version)
Surprise! Pink floyd's founding member Syd Barrett's muse's roots
discovered in Mizoram The one-time girlfriend and love interest of
Syd Barrett was born to a Mizo mother and a British father Image by
Byron's Muse
Wish You Were Here, Comfortably Numb, Another Brick On The Wall! Do
these ring a bell in your ears? If yes, you are right there! And if no,
then well, let me reveal to you an astonishing story! These are one of
the famous songs of the groundbreaking English rock band named 'Pink
Floyd'! The songs that have the musical power to give you goosebumps!
Now, let me unearth something for you all to know.
Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett was one of the founding members of the band
that was formed in 1965. If you want to know more about this famous man,
you can find a great amount of information in the world of the internet
but one of the interesting sides of his life was his romantic life.
Barrett had relationships with various women. Among them, one of the
women named Evelyn "Iggy" Rose (aka "Iggy the Eskimo", "Iggy the Inuit")
has a northeastern connection! Yes. You read it right! This is what the
story is about.
The one-time girlfriend and love interest of Syd Barrett was born to a
Mizo mother and a British father. She was born as Evelyn Joyce but most
commonly referred as "Iggy the Eskimo", "Iggy the Inuit", owing to her
alleged Inuit (a member of an indigenous people of northern Canada and
parts of Greenland and Alaska) heritage.
She passed away at the age of 69 in London in 2017 and right three years
after her death, her roots were discovered amidst the hills of Mizoram.
How did the discovery happen and unfold? There happens to be a website
dedicated to Iggy by her fans where someone from Mizoram stumbled upon a
post in the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit website.
Iggy Rose's Mizo mother named Chawngpuii married a British army officer
named Harry Joyce who was serving in the then British-ruled India. Iggy
was born somewhere in present-day Pakistan. She was given a native name
(Laldawngliani) as well by her mother which stands for 'Gift of Gods',
in a language Iggy never spoke.
Before moving to England, she did her schooling in India and Aden. She
had a mark in the spotlight. Just the way she made her debut appearance
was the similar way she abruptly disappeared from the spotlight scene.
It is only when the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit launched a mission to
bring her back four decades later, they connected with the maternal side
of her family in Mizoram.
In her teenage years, Iggy was known to be a mysterious figure in the
1960's London's music scene. She had remarkable Asian facial features
which made her one of the most attractive women in the music industry.
She was also known as a 'Flower Child', a synonym for Hippies and she
dated the likes of Eric Clapton, Rolling Stones' Keith Richards and of
course, as I mentioned, the most famous, Syd Barrett
Iggy also made a nude appearance on the cover of Syd Barett's solo album
'The Madcap Laughs which made her unforgettable. In April 1967, Iggy
joined the counter-culture throng in Alexandra Palace for The 14-Hour
Technicolor Dream-"all 14 hours of it!"-where Floyd played a hypnotic
set at dawn.
In 1967, Iggy made her film debut in a short documentary titled IN Gear
which was screened as a supporting film in cinemas around the country.
In the year 1966, Iggy's mother lost contacts with her family due to the
Mizos' uprising. One of Iggy's relatives in Mizoram named Rosangliana
said, "After Mizoram returned to normalcy following the 1986 peace
accord, we resumed the search for Iggy's parents, going through Havant
Council Hampshire and the UK's Ministry of Defence, but to no avail."
A post regarding Iggy was being updated on the internet and after that,
her story came into light, they managed to connect to her family in
London. Iggy's brother and sister were elated to have discover the other
half of their family. Iggy's fan page is given a new name as Iggy the
Mizo following the discovery.
Many thanks to the Mizoram online community! ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Iggy by legendary Pink Floyd photographer Vic Singh, 2015.
Part 3 of our Mizoram newspaper cuttings.
ThePrint
(in one word) is an Indian online newspaper, based in New Delhi,
launched in August 2017 by editor Shekhar Gupta. It is sharply focused
on politics and policy, government and governance. Its leadership team
includes India’s most experienced and respected journalists with proven
track records in the finest news organisations.
Myithili Hazarika wrote: Pink Floyd muse Evelyn ‘Iggy’ Rose had Mizo
roots – 4 yrs after her death, the families connect.
Pink Floyd muse Evelyn ‘Iggy’ Rose had Mizo roots.
(Text version)
Pink Floyd muse Evelyn ‘Iggy’ Rose had Mizo roots – 4 yrs after her
death, the families connect
Evelyn 'Iggy' Rose's mother was from Mizoram who married British Army
officer Harry Joyce
New Delhi: A little over three years after her death in 2017, the
family of Evelyn 'Iggy' Rosethe enigmatic girlfriend of Pink Floyd
founder Syd Barrett, who appeared on the cover of his album 'The Madcap
Laughs' — was able to reconnect with her relatives in Mizoram recently.
Rose's mother was Chawngpuii, a Mizo woman, and her father a British
army officer, Harry Joyce. The couple married in Aizawl in 1946. Rose,
born a year later, had a Mizo middle name 'Laldawngliani'.
Also known as 'Iggy The Eskimo Girl' or 'Iggy The Innuit', Rose had
achieved cult status in the 1960s Swinging London, with her long dark
hair and Asian features. Such had been her popularity that there is a
fan site in her honour called, 'The Holy Church of Iggy The Innuit (now
renamed as 'The Holy Church of Iggy The Mizo').
In an interview to British journalist Mark Blake, Rose had recalled how
her father travelled to a "remote village in the Himalayas" where "he
met the woman that would become my mother".
But the two families lost touch in 1966 during the Mizo insurgency days.
Rosangliana, one of her relatives in Mizoram, told The Assam Tribune,
"After Mizoram returned to normalcy following the 1986 peace accord, we
resumed the search for Iggy's parents...but to no avail."
It was only weeks ago that someone from Mizoram stumbled upon a post on
her fan site and alerted the family. "A few days later, a guy named
Felix (who runs the fan site) gave us information about Iggy's
siblings," Rosangliana said, and added: “We have contacted Iggy's
brother Stephen and sister Elizabeth.”
Many thanks to the Mizoram online community! ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Iggy by legendary Pink Floyd photographer Vic Singh, 2015.
Part 2 of our Mizoram newspaper cuttings.
IndiaTimes
(IT) is a portal that seems to be linked to the newspaper The
Times of India (TOI), published by Times Internet Limited and
powered by Indiatimes Lifestyle Network. It has an elaborate article
titled: Pink Floyd’s Muse Iggy ‘The Inuit’ Was Reportedly From The
Hills Of Mizoram, written by Basit Aijaz.
Pink Floyd’s Muse Iggy ‘The Inuit’ Was Reportedly From The Hills Of
Mizoram.
(Text version)
Pink Floyd’s Muse Iggy ‘The Inuit’ Was Reportedly From The Hills Of
Mizoram Basit Aijaz
Highlights
* Now, four years after her death, it has all come together the charming
socialite was from the hills of Mizoram.
* It was reported that Iggy's great-grandfather Thangphunga was a
chieftain of three Mizoram villages now consolidated as Chaltlang.
* It all, though, falls into place with this revelation - her mother
Chawngpuii (her English name was Angela) had married British Army
officer Harry Charlton Joyce who was serving in India and had then left
for Yemen, followed by England.
Evelyn 'Iggy' Rose, a friend, a model and possible love interest of Pink
Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett graced the scene of his debut album in the
1960s.
Her figure has always engulfed in mystery and whenever Iggy was
requested about her origins, she would mysteriously confer with "the
Himalayas”. There has always been an interest in her origins.
While her looks attracted attention, it was her personality that charmed
the London Scene. When her mixed-race appearance was exoticised in the
London of the '60s, she gave the name "Eskimo" to a photographer as a
joke and another origin story stuck, Iggy "the Inuit".
Now, four years after her death, it has all come together - the charming
socialite was from the hills of Mizoram.
"Iggy's Mizo title was Laldawngliani,” Rosangzuala, 48, whose
grandmother and Iggy's grandmother had been sisters, told The Times of
India.
"I had been looking for Iggy and our England family since 2008. I joined
Facebook to look for them. But nothing turned up... Days ago, I saw a
post in a local Mizoram Facebook group which mentioned a blog which said
Iggy 'the Inuit might be a Mizo ... If not for Iggy's relationship with
Syd Barrett, we might not have found them. I thank Pink Floyd fans for
helping us reunite the family," Rosangzuala said.
It was reported that Iggy's great-grandfather Thangphunga was a
chieftain of three Mizoram villages now consolidated as Chaltlang.
It all, though, falls into place with this revelation - her mother
Chawngpuii (her English name was Angela) had married British Army
officer Harry Charlton Joyce who was serving in India and had then left
for Yemen, followed by England.
"Her father was posted with the Royal Engineers. He was a Major when he
married Chawngpuii," Rosangzuala added.
In 1966, what was then the Mizo district and would later become the
state of Mizoram was caught in a struggle for autonomy. Letters coming
into the state would be censored by the government and, many believe,
destroyed.
"The last time we received a letter from Iggy's father, he was a
Brigadier. After that, all communication stopped.” Around this time,
Iggy was attending art school, meeting some iconic pop stars of the time
- Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Keith Moon.
She was also attending counterculture concerts like the '14 Hour
Technicolour Dream', headlined by Pink Floyd, says the first extensive
profile of the socialite by British music journalist Mark Blake in 2011,
before she started living with Syd Barrett.
While years passed and though her family in Mizoram knew about her, they
could not figure out how to get in touch with their relatives in England.
It was only through the Facebook post that Rosangzuala saw that finally
established a trail. It was a single line in a 2017 obituary - she died
a day before turning 70 - in a blog called The Holy Church of Iggy the
Inuit (which replaced “Inuit” with “Mizo" later) which had resurfaced on
Facebook
Many thanks to the Mizoram online community! ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Iggy by legendary Pink Floyd photographer Vic Singh, 2015
On the end of May 2021 the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit was consulted
by a visitor from Mizoram
who found it interesting enough to share on a Facebook group.
There it was picked up by an Indian relative of Iggy. The Mizo branch
had lost contact with the English family members in the sixties, when
there had been a military conflict between India and Mizoram freedom
fighters.
In the aftermath of the conflict the Indian government censored all
letters to and from Mizoram and communication was lost between Iggy’s
mother and her family in north-east India.
So imagine the emotions from Iggy’s nephews and nieces when they found
out that, perhaps, after a half-century gap they could get in contact
again with their long-lost family, living in Great-Britain.
In Mizo circles the Holy Church went viral and the Reverend was
contacted by quite a few people. You can read about it in Family
Reunion.
Meanwhile the Indian press got hold of the news and in the next few
posts we will highlight some of these articles.
The
Northeast Today is a digital portal and they had a news snippet on
Twitter. Unfortunately we couldn’t track down the article.
Did You know: Pink Floyd and 'Iggy the Inuit had a Mizoram connection.
The Assam Tribune, so says Wikipedia, is an Indian English daily
newspaper published from Guwahati and Dibrugarh, Assam. With over
700,000 copies of current circulation and a readership of over 3
million, it is the highest circulated English daily in northeastern
India.
They published the article Iggy the Inuit found to have roots in
Mizoram, written by Zodin Sanga.
Iggy the Inuit found to have roots in Mizoram @ The Assam Tribune.
(Text version)
Iggy the Inuit found to have roots in Mizoram ZODIN SANGA
A Mizo family in Aizawl found their long lost relative, three years
after her death, and she turned out to be Pink Floyd's founding member
Syd Barrett's one-time girlfriend who achieved cult status in the
'Swinging London' during the late 1960s.
The woman with Mizo links is none other than Evelyn 'Iggy' Rose (born
Evelyn Joyce), most commonly referred to as 'Iggy the Eskimo' and 'Iggy
the Inuit', owing to her alleged Inuit heritage.
However, someone from Mizoram stumbled upon a post in the Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit - a website dedicated to Iggy by her fans. The discovery
came three years after Iggy died in London at the age of 69 in 2017.
Now, it has come to light that Iggy Rose had a Mizo mother named
Chawngpuii, who had married British army officer Harry Joyce who was
serving in the then British-ruled India. Chawngpuii gave her first child
a Mizo middle name 'LaIdawngliani'.
Iggy's maternal greatgrandfather Thangphunga was the chieftain of three
villages, including Chaltlang, now a part of Aizawl.
The marriage took place in Aizawl in 1946. Iggy was born a year later
somewhere in present-day Pakistan.
She attended school in India and Aden, before moving to England. As a
teenager, Iggy became a mysterious figure in the 1960s London's music
scene. With her long dark hair and lovely Asian features, she became one
of the most attractive Flower Children', synonym for Hippies, dating the
likes of Eric Clapton, Keith Richards of Rolling Stones, and most
famously Syd Barrett.
It was her nude appearance on the cover of Syd Barrett's solo album The
Madcap Laughs that made her most memorable.
Iggy gained notoriety by appearing in a newsreel shot at Granny Takes a
Trip and in Melody Maker, demonstrating a new dance. She then
disappeared from the scene as abruptly as she appeared, believed to be
married to a rich man and lived a reclusive life.
Almost four decades later, the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit launched a
mission to find Iggy and bring her back to the spotlight. The mission
was accomplised, and also helped Iggy's maternal relatives in Mizoram
discover who they had been searching for.
Rosangliana, one of Iggy's relatives in Mizoram, said they lost contact
with Iggy's mother in 1966 when Mizoram plunged into an insurgency, also
known as the Mizos' Uprising.
The Government of India restricted and censored all information coming
in or going out of Mizoram, then a district under Assam. All letters
going through the national postal service were intercepted by the
Government and either censored or destroyed.
"After Mizoram returned to normalcy following the 1986 peace accord, we
resumed the search for Iggy's parents, going through Havant Council,
Hampshire (where her parents used to live) and the UK's Ministry of
Defence (as her father was in the military), but to no avail,"
Rosangliana said.
A few weeks back, the family was informed when someone came across this
post about Iggy on the internet.
"We immediately wrote to the website seeking more details about Iggy and
her family in London," Rosangliana said.
"A few days later, a guy from London named Felix got back to us, giving
us information about Iggy's siblings - a brother and a sister who still
live in England.
"We have contacted Iggy's brother Stephen and her sister Elizabeth. They
were so excited to find us," he said.
Iggy's 93-year-old aunt Chawngmawii is still alive and lives with her
children in Kolasib in northern Mizoram.
After the discovery of her Mizo roots, the fan page Iggy The Inuit was
was rechristened as Iggy The Mizo.
Many thanks to the Mizoram online community! ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Iggy by legendary Pink Floyd photographer Vic Singh, 2015.
The
Times Of India, the oldest English-language newspaper in India,
posted a follow-up article about Iggy’s Mizo roots. The first article
was called Pink Floyd Muse Iggy 'the Inuit' had Mizo roots and
can be found here: Iggy
takes India by Storm #6.
For the follow-up journalist Chandrima Banerjee contacted Iggy's sister
Elizabeth and none other than yours truly, the Reverend of the Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit.
Elizabeth is planning to visit Mizoram and meet her family over there…
I’ve never been to India. I’m going to visit my relatives in Mizoram
with my partner Rob next year, depending on the Covid-19 situation,
obviously, I’m really buzzed about it.
Elizabeth also mentions a few things we didn’t know. Iggy was born in Rawalpindi
(Pakistan), her brother Stephen in Dhaka
(Bangladesh).
If you want to know what the Reverend had to say, you’ll need to consult
Chandrima Banerjee’s article: Pink Floyd muse Iggy’s English &
Mizo families to reunite after 60 years (URL: Times
of India).
Pink Floyd muse Iggy's English & Mizo families to reunite after 60 years.
(Text version)
Floyd muse Iggy's English & Mizo families to reunite after 60 years
Her name, Laldawngliani, was known only to a chosen few. She had not
seen her family in faraway Mizoram since she was a child. And the few
memories she had of the time she spent there were, perhaps, coloured by
distance and imagination - like the time a cat in her garden she wanted
to pet turned out to be a tiger. Evelyn "Iggy" Rose, counterculture
cover girl of the London of the '60s, had locked away her link to India
for as long as she lived. But now, brought together by a blog post, the
English and Mizo families of Iggy Rose, who had been sundered apart for
six decades by the Mizo rebellion, will finally meet.
"I don't know how to adequately describe what it's like to reconnect
with my Mizo family. It's an amazing experience. This is a very
emotional time for me," Elizabeth Joyce, Iggy's sister, told TOI. "I've
never been to India. I'm going to visit my relatives in Mizoram with my
partner Rob next year, depending on the Covid-19 situation, obviously.
I'm really buzzed about it."
Elizabeth is 62 now, having retired after years documenting artefacts in
museums. "Our parents met at the end of the Second World War, when our
father was in the army and stationed in Mizoram — then, the Lushai
Hills. He was a Major at the time. They have happy memories of that
period in their lives. Father said it was a very beautiful and
fascinating region. He seemed to have been struck by the remoteness of
the place," said Elizabeth. She was born at Worthing, Sussex, in England
and does not have a Mizo name. "Evelyn Laldawngliani was born in
Rawalpindi (Pakistan) on 12 December, 1947. (Our brother) Stephen
Lalungmuana was born in Dhaka (Bangladesh) in January 1949."
For about three weeks now, Mizo social media groups have been bustling
with the "discovery" that the muse to Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett
had roots in the hill state. The blog from which this emerged, 'The Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit', had posted a single line about it in 2017,
which someone from Mizoram chanced upon, posted on local social media
and it blew up. Someone got in touch with the blog's author and it
turned out Iggy's mother, Chawngpuii, was Mizo.
"Basically, this was confirmed to me by a family member, after Iggy had
passed away. During her life, we just said she was from the Himalayas or
Pakistan as we didn't have a more accurate description. Iggy had always
been very discreet about her roots... Apparently the family was attacked
during one of the disturbances and they had to flee the country. I don't
know where and when this happened. Iggy's father was a British army man
and as such a symbol of the oppressor ... Iggy was of the opinion that
this wasn't something that should be known to the outside world," Felix
Atagong, 61, who runs the blog, told TOI. "Iggy only spoke scarcely
about India, but that was perhaps because she was a toddler when living
there. There is only the anecdote how she wanted to pet the cat in the
garden that actually was a tiger. But I'm not certain how truthful that
story is. It's typically Iggy though."
The two sides of the family lost touch in the '60s. "After the Mizoram
disturbance, we lost contact with them. Due to the insurgency, there was
a lot of problem," Rosangzuala, 48, an extended family member, told TOI.
"Six decades later, because of the internet, we found them."
Just as mysterious as her origin story was the coda to Iggy's '60s life.
"For decades, nothing was known about her, apart from the fact that she
was nicknamed Iggy the Eskimo and that she had been living with Syd for
about two weeks. After the sleeve picture (on Barrett's debut album,
'The Madcap Laughs') had been taken, she disappeared out of his life and
nobody knew what had become of her, after 1970," Atagong, who started
his blog in 2008 and had been in touch with Iggy since 2010, said. But
she didn't exactly disappear. "There was no social media in the '60s, so
it appeared that Iggy simply vanished while she was literally just a few
blocks away, socialising with people from underground circles -
musicians, actors, photographers, movie makers. Unfortunately, this
mostly stayed undocumented," he added. "After a while, the psychedelic
free ride' days were over and in the mid-'70s, she looked for a job on a
horse farm where she met her husband. They moved to a little village
where she lived for the rest of her life."
An IT manager who started the blog for a lark, Felix, too, is now deeply
invested in this family reunion. "I'm a geek who takes his Pink
Floyd-Syd Barrett-Iggy the Eskimo fandom too seriously.... Since I was
eight, I wanted to be a writer or a journalist like Tintin and I feel a
blog is the exact medium for that. And from time to time it is really
worthwhile, like now with the reunion of the Iggy family," he said. “I
care more for this family reunion than for a new Pink Floyd record. I
regard this as the most important event that happened on my blog, next
to the discovery' of Iggy herself."
Many thanks to: Chandrima Banerjee and the Mizoram online community! ♥
Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Photographer and artist Kevin Geronimo Brandtner is a collector
of all things beautiful and curious, from Vienna, Austria. On one of his
discovery expeditions, end of June 2023, he entered a second-hand shop
and… Well, why don’t we let him tell about it?
I happened to be in a second-hand shop today. As I work in the darkroom
myself, this contact print was interesting. When I got home I realised
it was Iggy Rose (Iggy the Eskimo/Inuit) the muse of former Pink Floyd
guitarist Syd Barrett. The pictures seem to be unknown because I can't
find them anywhere. (.../...) So many questions. The photographer
seems to have been Lukas Feri. Little is known about him either. The
print is original from the 70s with markings.
A man in the dark in a picture frame
In the right side corner, Feri’s name can be seen with the year 1974.
This messes up Iggy’s timeline as far as we know it. We always thought
that her pictures, taken by Lukas, dated from the end of the sixties.
Of course, there is a chance that Lukas developed the negatives years
later, but perhaps it is safer to conclude that Iggy frequented the
photographer for several years.
Feri Lukas Contact Sheet.
Alone in the night as the daylight brings
The contact sheet has 32 pictures in total, numbered from 1 to 35. (Two
pictures are black, and one – number 11 – has been cut out.) And while
some pictures can make you doubt, others have the typical Iggy
characteristics we all like: her eternal cigarette, a glass of wine and
obviously that mischievous smile. None of these pictures have been seen
before.
We are not going to repeat the Feri Lukas story here, we have done that
already in two Sherlock-Holmes-like features: Amateur
Photographer: New Iggy Picture Found! And Feri
Lukas, photographer, co-written by one of Lukas’ nephews. It appears
that Lukas’ photo archive was sold on a Hungarian flea market after he
died, and this contact print travelled in mysterious ways from Budapest
to Vienna.
Enough blah-blah-blah, you are all here to watch the pictures, aren’t
you? They will also be posted on Tumblr in a slightly bigger
format, with the tags Iggy
the Eskimo, Feri
Lukas and KGB
(from Kevin Geronimo Brandtner).
Nice to see you are still reading this. When it was confirmed that the
pictures were indeed of Iggy, Kevin returned to the same shop a few days
later.
He searched through the same carton box and found some of Feri’s city
shots, fashion and nude photographs, including two Iggy large-format
darkroom prints that he had missed before. Here they are.
Iggy by Feri Lukas. Iggy
by Feri Lukas.
Haunting notes, pizzicato strings
A great, great thank you to Kevin Geronimo Brandtner. He adds a new
country to our growing list of Iggy contributors. We have had valuable
discoveries from Australia, England, France, Hong Kong, Russia, the USA,
and now from Austria.
While some people think I’m undoubtedly mad I am not the guy to fall for
a simple superstition. But isn’t it weird that whenever I think that my
Iggy adventures are over there is a new discovery falling from the skies?
It is as if Iggy wants to say to all of us: ‘Don’t forget me’. Be sure,
Iggy, we won’t.
Many thanks to: Kevin Geronimo Brandtner. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥