A Few Short Ones

When I stepped into his front room, I was astounded to be faced by The Rape, a large, original, Reni Magritte painting. I was further awed to discover several more works by famous surrealist artists, gracing the walls of George Melly’s Hampstead home.

I was there to photograph an interview with the well-known jazz singer, writer, lecturer, critic and yes, art collector, for the top shelf magazine, Men Only. The interviewer in charge was called James. James – a good looking, organised, and very neat and tidy individual, was gay. It was likely had been chosen to conduct this interview because it was well known that George Melly was bisexual. Men Only always wanted to get all the sexy and eyebrow lifting stories they could get, after all.

George had an open marriage with Diana, a somewhat younger woman that I could almost describe as a hippy chick; she even owned a blue VW Microbus festooned with large painted daisies, parked on the street outside.

As we sat down to begin the interview, Diana brought out a small decorated wooden box and looked at George – “Is it all right?” she asked. George shrugged and Diana proceeded to roll a large joint.

I was a hippy, truth be told, and I was quite used to smoking dope. James had probably smoked it a few times, but it was not really his thing; nevertheless, he had a few tokes as did we all, and the large joint made its way around the room several times.

The hash Diana had used, turned out to be very strong stuff. A few minutes later I was well away. In Fact everyone was becoming very stoned indeed. Luckily, I was quite experienced at both photography and joint smoking, so I didn’t have too much of a problem getting my exposures correct and the image properly in focus. This was just as well because the afternoon was rapidly going out of focus. Everything was becoming very strange and dreamlike as Diana continued to roll and pass around her super joints. Even more strange and dreamlike it was, being surrounded as we were, by George’s many famous surreal paintings.

What they talked about? I have no idea. I remember that they both took part, that it was quite interesting and seemed to make perfect sense at the time, but all I really remember is that I spent a very pleasant, very stoned, summer afternoon, with some lovely, interesting, and educated people, who were having a lively and intelligent conversation. Wonderful!

James, on the other hand, was well out of his depth, dope wise, and he was probably struggling to keep up.

When I asked him, a week later, as I was turning in my photographs, how the article had gone, his face turned into a scowl.

“I couldn’t write it” he confessed. “It was total gibberish, none of it made any sense.”

Humm… I thought — I was rather disappointed. I was looking forward reading it. For one thing I was eager to find out what they had talked about — but he was probably right. While I had very much enjoyed the conversation and the afternoon, it might well have been rubbish, we were all quite out of it to be sure. 

I sensed, however, that the real reason might have been that James was so stoned that he had forgotton to turn on his tape recorder.