A contemporary of mine in the music business, who’s enjoyed a parallel passage to my own, came by the other day. Like me, he grew up in England in the 1950’s, coming to manhood in London through the 60’s before following our respective paths overseas in the early 1970’s. He to Southern California, I to Southeast Asia. We caught up every decade or so as we passed through LA or Hong Kong.
It was interesting to compare notes and to see just how much the music of our times shaped our perceptions and, in his case, his career. We agreed, to be in London as young men 1966-69 was to have won First Prize in the Lottery of Life and that the 70’s, the UK’s Thatcher years while great for them, was no place for us....
While young it seems for a brief moment you’re effortlessly plugged into the cutting edge of what’s going on. This absolutely applies to popular music and most probably to fashion. It doesn’t last long before you’re receding into the mainstream, which is where you start to become a quantifiable demographic to the smart cookies who run the music and fashion industries.
I observed that by the 1980 I no longer had any interest in jazz, an enthusiasm we’d both shared in the 50’s and 60’s, only really listening to classical music. Popular music had become an anodyne adjunct, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not. “How was it”, I asked, “for him, a professional musician?” “The same”, he said. “You like what you grew up with. We all do. The only difference is, as a musician I incorporate things I find interesting into my music and appreciate good musicianship wherever I hear it”.
My friend, a talented keyboard and guitarist had been a member of a number of successful bands through the 60’s and 70’s, is still a working musician but his career is now more about putting together music for film and negotiating international rights. “We still get together and play when we can”, he says of his last band from the late 70’s. On a recent visit to his studio in his house up in the Hollywood hills I heard them play. It was kind of jazz fusion, exactly the kind of music professional musicians seem to like to play when they get together and which does absolutely nothing for me.
Music for the Dance of Time....
Changing the subject he asked, “Do you remember that time Ike & Tina played that tiny basement club in Queen’s Gate? What was the name of that place?”
I certainly did. No one there would ever forget it. Which took us on a blast from the past tour round the haunts of our youth: the Marquee, Ronnie Scott’s, Eel Pie Island, the Ad Lib, Roundhouse, the Scotch, Pheasantry, Sybilla’s and Arethusa, with a quick reference to the Stone’s Concert in the Park for Brian and the Isle of Wight. “I’d sorta had it and left town by Tramp’s”, he said. “Me too”, I said. “What was the name of that place where all those tasty French birds in kilts and knee length white socks used to go?”. Le Kilt! we yelled in unison, me eying my wife uneasily, who is French, was in London in those days and did indeed go to this club dressed just so. “Eeet’s OK”, she sniffed, doing a very passable Jeanne Moreau. “Eeet does not mattaire, ah pwobablee wood not ‘ave looked h’at ivaire off you h’enni-why”.
Hong Kong in the mid-70’s, which is where I washed up after a couple of years knocking around the region, whatever else it’s merits, could never be accused of being musically exciting. “The Hustle”would be about it, with Breathy White groaning an accompaniment, compounded by Isaac Hayes’ Love Theme, which followed you around the world for 20 years because Cathay Pacific had just purchased the rights. No wonder us 60’s types thought of the 70’s, which began in 1973, as the musical pits. Socially and culturally the town was stuck somewhere between 1949 and 1965. Homosexuality was still a criminal offence, smoking dope was a heinous crime and the consumption of alcohol in large quantities was obligatory. Serious drug taking being confined to the Chinese working poor. No such statute as Drunk in Charge of a vehicle sullied the statute books. A chap would have to be involved in a serious accident and be totally legless, in which case Careless Driving would be the offence. There were such things as discos but dancing was mostly confined to the major hotels. The Scene in The Peninsula was as good as it got. As for live music, yer average Filipino band was about the extent of it.
Born in Rat Alley....
That is until Disco Disco. If the club scene in London was predominantly hetero, in Hong Kong we have to thank the then underground gay community for the creation of anything like a nightlife becoming a major city. The man responsible for liberating the club scene from the stultifying grip of the hotels was the splendidly eccentric and queenly Gordon Huthart, an American, who had a talent for infuriating Hong Kong’s police, who had it in for him. In 1980 Huthart picked a basement in a rat infested alley just off core Central for Disco Disco. It was a huge success from day one. Everybody went, Euro or Chinese, hetero/homo, celeb or not, rich or poor, so long as the door goons thought you had something to offer. So dark, crowded, noisy and full of flashing lights, it was all but impenetrable to Hong Kong’s finest. Huthart was the guy who paved the way for the phenomenon which is Lan Kwai Fong today. After Disco Disco came Alan Zeman, California and Christian Rhomberg’s 1997.
In fact 1980 was a watershed for homophobic Hong Kong. That was the year a young 29-year old Scottish police inspector, John MacLennan, under investigation for gross indecency, managed to shoot himself in the chest five times with his .38 Smith & Wesson…. and they called it suicide.
Birds Do It, The English Do It..... Chinese don’t?
It was a classic homosexual scandal, rich with racial and colonial overtones that can only happen in a society where homosexuality is not only illegal, but aggressively prosecuted. In China and Taiwan, very sensibly, it’s never been illegal. That was something the British introduced. Until 1978 however, the authorities had very sensibly adopted a blind eye policy, only pursuing egregious cases if they had to. Following decriminalisation in the UK in 1967 there had been efforts to align Hong Kong law, but it had never gone through because, it was said, the Chinese would never accept it. In 1978 the whole rotten edifice fell apart with the arrest and conviction of an unsavoury British solicitor for gross indecency with underage Chinese young men. John Duffy was convicted and sentenced to three years imprisonment. He appealed claiming that the sentence was unfair and threatening to name names of prominent homosexuals in government, the judiciary and the police. Since the then Commissioner of Police, Roy Henry, was known to be gay, along with numerous other members of the judiciary and the legal fraternity, and the fact that certain anti-British Chinese community leaders were denouncing homosexuality as a Western vice, totally alien to the Chinese, this rather set the cat among the pigeons. A special police unit (SIU) was set up to crack down on homosexuals in the civil service. The new unit, immediately christened the Fairy Squad by bar wits, set about its invidious work. They had, they said, a list of 2,000 suspected homosexuals in the civil service they were investigating. A pall of fear fell over government house. Unsurprisingly however, there were no high level resignations or prosecutions. John Duffy never spilled the beans, but a junior police officer, who had had an earlier complaint of sexual assault made against him by a young Chinese male that was not pursued, was to be arrested. That young man was John MacLennan, who had also said if asked in court he could name many prominent homosexuals. The arresting officers were to find MacLennan dead in his quarters, revolver in hand and five bullet in his chest.
Do you believe in Fairies?
The coroner didn’t buy the police story of suicide and recorded an open verdict. Despite the seeming impossibility of the feat, questions asked in Westminster, a Commission of Inquiry, and a campaign by the bereaved family, to this day we are seriously asked to believe that John MacLennan shot himself in the chest five times with a large calibre weapon intended to stop villains in their tracks with one shot.
It was not until 1991 that Hong Kong actually got around to decriminalising homosexuality but by 1982 the authorities and Hong Kong’s finest decided to butt out of gay busting and, criminal or not, the gay community was finally able to openly enjoy a night life, way beyond the hetero pleasures of the Godawful Wanch and prim hotel niteries, a scene they had been responsible for invigorating, if not creating.
