Mr Brighton Junior

So...back to the chronological history of Auntie Pus managers...No. 1: David Scott.

I grew up - if I was American which I'm decidedly not, I guess I'd say I was raised - in the leafy but lively South West London suburb of Wimbledon, and the milieu in which I mixed, drank and took drugs, was peopled with some unique, idiosyncratic and wonderful characters, not least Bill Major, an original beatnik - who'd been written about in such terms by the News Of The World (RIP) in 1958 - who gave me the nickname of Auntie, a couple of years before punk prompted me to add the Pus suffix. Included in this group of chums - what they would have called a 'fast set' in the twenties - were two loveable rogues and smooth talking bastards called Bob & John Wilson, and the amazingly dextrous guitarist and fantastic but rarely washed songwriter Brian 'Fast Fingers' Holmes, who also went on to be managed by David Scott.

I'd heard apocryphal tales about David Scott before meeting him, primarily from the aforementioned Bob Wilson, who had briefly attended my old alma mater KCS Wimbledon, about a decade before, as had David Scott. Both were drinking buddies of Oliver Reed, a former Wimbledon resident in the formative years of his acting career. David hailed from Brighton, where his father Lionel was a prominent car dealer known as Mr Brighton. I had been transfixed by tales of David, not least his enormous capacity for food, alcohol and fun, that I'd heard from Bob over the years, and was already spending many of my weekends in the sometimes sunny seaside resort of Brighton, as I was friends, again through  Bob & John Wilson, with a family of six wild and wonderful sisters who had a flat there, and with whom the second youngest  Nadine, nicknamed the Lizard by an ex of hers and also fellow old Kings boy for her chameleonic qualities, I'd recently fallen happily in unrequited love. I still am and it's still unrequited, it being hard to track down people by the name of Smith on social networking sites. I had often visualised David and reflected on if and when we might meet, and what the outcome would be.

Fast forward to a glorious evening in the midst of the long, fabled summer of 1976. I strolled the mile and a half or so from the family menage in Wimbledon Park, of which I was at the time briefly a part again, up to my two local pubs, the Hand In Hand and Crooked Billet, which nestle on a green on the edge of Wimbledon Common and opposite KCS. As I approached I saw Bob & John Wilson standing outside with a group of people that included a few unrecognised faces. One of these, a man whom I was shortly to be introduced to as Laurie Poore and whom David was also then managing, was sitting on a post outside the Crooked Billet playing some lovely fingerpicking guitar and singing some songs. As I approached the battle cruiser, a tall, well built handsome man wearing a big cowboy hat, a dark blue velvet waistcoat with gold brocade, and with his teeth clamped firmly on a large cigar relieved Laurie of his guitar, saying: "Well, I suppose I'd better do one - after all, I am a bit good, ain't I?" With that, and with said cigar still firmly clamped in his mouth, he launched into the Stones' All Over Now just as I got to within a couple of yards away. It is testament to David's charisma that all thoughts of the beer for which I'd been gagging throughout my half hour walk from home were temporarily banished from mind. I remember thinking, quite correctly as it turned out: this must be David Scott. A couple of drinks later,  by which time Brian Holmes had joined the group and aired a couple of his awesome compositions, Bob said: "Play one of your songs, Jools!" Laurie passed me the guitar, but the memory of which song I performed in that golden light has been lost in the mists of time, although I have a feeling that I aired my parody of Mott The Hoople's All The Way From Memphis, psychogeographically entitled All The Way From West Ewell (the lyrics to this are also lost in the mists of time but I can recall the chorus couplet: Well it's a mighty long way on the 293/But it's worth it just to get where you wanna be). Anyhow it led to a happily frolicsome, tempestuous manager/artiste relationship with David. 

This was pursued on the dual fronts of London and Brighton. I would continue my weekend jaunts down to the seaside to party with Nadine and her sisters and crew, combined with clubbing and drinking with David in a protege role, and periodically David would appear unannounced with a gang from Brighton, in Wimbledon. David was during this time partners in a car showroom in Brighton, and would always arrive driving an impressive automobile - the two that stick in my mind being a canary yellow Ford Mustang and a white Rolls Royce (just like John Lennon's but minus the flower power adornments). David's gang included many memorable characters, including a wonderful poet character with what today we term severe and enduring mental health issues, known as the Reverend Geoffrey, and a recently semi-retired armed robber named Johnny Nokes.

By the next year, David and his partner in the car showroom, Phil Church, had diversified into being punk music promoters, primarily putting on weekly gigs at Hastings Pier Ballroom. At one of these in about April of that year the headliners were The Damned and dressing room chat between David and Rat Scabies subsequently revealed that David managed me, and that Rat & I were old teenage musical consorts. The idea was thus proposed, and subsequently executed, that I support The Damned on their next appearance at Hastings Pier Ballroom, which took place in the July (also on the bill were a thankfully pre-Nazi Skrewdriver). Nick Leigh from the Derek Block agency, then booking the acts for prime punk venue the Vortex Club in Wardour Street was in attendance and liked my act, going onto book me to support The Banshees and The Ants there on Halloween night 1977. (The rest, as they say, is history, or at least it will be if you keep reading this blog.)

As for my working relationship with David, it endured until late 1979, marred only slightly by David's bankruptcy and divorce demoting him from millionaire status to entrepreneurial resourcefulness, and rather a lot by my increasing use of hard drugs. David financed the recording of Halfway To Venezuela and Marmalade Freak at the legendary Pathway Studios in 1978 and his coup de grace as a manager was to schedule a meeting with the directors of Robertson's Jams to market me. David told me the meeting took place early on a Monday morning, and that he was shown into a traditional boardroom scenario, with the long polished oval table, replete with crystal water decanter. He took out a portable cassette player, put it on the gleaming mahogany and regaled the aging directors present with my dulcet tones singing Marmalade Freak. He then told them: "What you need to do is get the golliwog off the jars and put my boy on!" Strangely enough, this was far too 'left field' (an expression not then invented and which I loathe nearly as much as those directors did my music) for them, and David was swiftly shown the door.

The dreaded Facebook will let you find David Lionel Scott, now a teetotal minor record company magnate with his own label, Tosh Records, based in Normandy, and a Brian Holmes page where you can access some of his amazing archive and, of course, my very own Auntie Pus page. You can also find recordings of Brian Holmes songs by both himself and Robin Bibi (my long term colleague through thick, thin, school and punk) on Tosh Records and David was kind enough to make my current gypsy swing band's tunes available for download via Tosh Records last year. We last saw each other, and both played a couple of songs, at the 50th birthday celebrations of yet another ex-KCS alumni Phil Woods a couple of years ago, where Laurie Poore was also in attendance. David tells me The Reverend Geoffrey is still performing - I do trust in all senses of the word; Johnny Nokes went on to be a butler for  a landed gentleman and passed away a few years ago - on the strange coincidence front I had to replace my boiler at home here in Plymouth not so long back, and the man who fitted it turned out to be John's nephew!