Mayfair (Part 1)

Jimi in his Brook Street pad, c.1968

MAYFAIR

The name ‘Mayfair’ relates to a May fair held here during the Middle Ages and possibly earlier. Until the early eighteenth century, the area remained a patchwork of fields and woodland scattered with outlying farms and hamlets. However, between 1720 and 1740 the wealthy Grosvenor family – who had inherited the land through a propitious marriage - initiated a series of developments between Regent Street and Park Lane. Around Curzon Street, a similar network of new streets was financed by the Earl of Chesterfield.

By the nineteenth century, Mayfair had already become one of London’s most fashionable districts, a distinction it retains to this day. The area’s upper class connotations has made it bastion for trendy and exclusive clubs and discotheques since the 1960s, though – perhaps because residential accommodation is relatively scarce here - few rock or pop stars have lived here (Jimi Hendrix being one of the most notable exceptions – see Brook Street).

Balfour Place

No 2

Headquarters of the Process, a Satanic Sixties cult run by two of that decade’s spookier individuals, former Scientologists Robert and Mary Ann DeGrimston. The DeGrimstons attracted a following among wealthier professionals, and by 1966 had accumulated enough cash to not only take a lease on this expensive mansion (owned at the time by the actor Richard Harris), but also to decorate it in an appropriately extravagant fashion. Sixties veterans will probably recall cult members wandering amid the throng at rock festivals, garbed in trademark black cloaks, silver crosses and dour expressions. ‘Fun’ was definitely not their middle name.

With Satan and Hitler high on their list of heroes, the Process was not your typical peace-and-love outfit. The frissance of evil – and hints of sexy goings on – definitely had appeal, however, particularly among thrill-seekers like the Rolling Stones and their entourage who had already tried just about everything else. This is not to say the Stones had any direct contact with the Process. But some of the cult’s weirder ideas - such as the belief that Hell’s Angels were the ‘shock troops’ of the coming Armageddon - were at least tacitly acknowledged by Jagger and Co at their epochal Hyde Park and Altamont Concerts of 1969, when they hired the Angels as ‘bodyguards’.

Jagger’s former girlfriend, Marianne Faithful, has admitted she was attracted to aspects of the cult – she liked the idea that its members took her seriously ‘when no one else did’ and because they ‘recognized that I have got magic powers’. However, it was Jumping Jack Flash himself – Mick Jagger – who eventually warned Faithful that she was possibly meddling out of her depth, and she backed off.

By 1967, the cult had opened an all-night coffee bar, Satan’s Cave, at the mansion. They held lectures on telepathy, conducted midnight meditations and put on performances or ‘Processcenes’. But for all their dark doings and sinister curses placed on those devotees who had abandoned the cult, there is no evidence that the Process was anything more than a group of highly theatrical, slightly warped Jesus freaks. Rumours of links with the Manson clan have never been proved.

Allegedly, Crowley devotee Jimmy Page later outbid David Bowie for ownership of the Tower – although there may be some confusion here with Page’s Kensington property, Tower House. As for the DeGrimstons, they were eventually ousted in a ‘palace coup’. Last reports had Robert DeGrimston working for an American phone company. The whereabouts of Mrs DeGrimston are unknown.

Berkeley Square

Morton’s No. 28

Glam rock superstar Marc Bolan and his long time girlfriend, singer Gloria Jones, dined in the restaurant of this exclusive private club on the night of 16 September 1977. Driving back to their home in southwest London, Jones lost control of the car and crashed into a tree. Bolan was killed instantly, Jones seriously injured.

Berkeley Street

Blue Angel No.14

This former late night drinking club was a hangout for the Beatles and other celebs in the mid-‘60s. Noel ‘Windmills Of Your Mind’ Harrison, son of the actor Rex Harrison, had performed here during the 1950s, and later hung out with the Beatles at the club during his brief assignation with fame. A live album, Noel Harrison at the Blue Angel, was released 1960.

Brook Street

No. 23

Jimi Hendrix and his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham lived here from 1968 to 1969. An English Heritage blue plaque commemorates the guitarist's association with the address, the first such plaque to be awarded to a rock star.

Coincidentally, two centuries ago another famous musician - the composer Handel lived (and died) - next door at no. 25. When interviewed by Don Short of the Daily Mirror, however, Hendrix was mistakenly informed that Handel had lived at no. 23. The guitarist was surprised. "I didn't even know this was his pad, man, until after I got in," he remarked. "And to tell you the God's honest truth I haven't heard much of the fella's stuff. But I dig a bit of Bach every now and then."

Short's interview with Hendrix took place in the attic, Hendrix's favourite room. "(It) contains an assortment of bric-a-brac and a bed with a Victorian shawl pinned to the ceiling as a canopy," wrote Short. “At two in the afternoon, Hendrix is making the bed, neatly folding back the black sheets and straightening the colorful Persian bedspread."

Kathy Etchingham is described by Hendrix biographer David Henderson as "Jimi's first real girlfriend in London ... She was a fun-loving English girl with a sensuous mouth, fine figure and shoulder-length red hair." Hendrix met Etchingham on the day of his arrival in England on September 1966 at the Scotch of St James club, off Piccadilly.

Puzzlingly, at the plaque unveiling ceremony on 14 September 1997, Etchingham told Mojo magazine that the Brook Street address "was the flat where Jimi locked me in the bathroom, I hit him with a frying pan and then he wrote Wind Cries Mary - a song about a domestic row." Etchingham’s memory seems to be at fault here: The Wind Cries Mary was written in early 1967, almost certainly at Hendrix’s manager’s Montagu Square address, and released shortly afterwards. Hendrix and Etchingham did not move to Brook Street until 1968.

The unveiling of the Hendrix memorial followed a lengthy dispute with Handel devotees, who wanted to knock nos. 23 and 25 into one to create a Handel museum. The idea of a plaque dedicated to (shock, horror) a rock guitarist adorning the wall of a museum dedicated to Handel was not something they were prepared to contemplate (interesting to speculate what Handel himself would have thought).

The Who's Pete Townshend pulled the string to unveil the plaque and made a heartfelt and moving speech. Other celebrities attending the ceremony included Hendrix's former bass-player Noel Redding, former Led Zeppelin bass-player John Paul Jones, Jim Capaldi (ex-Traffic) and American folk singer Tim Rose. Curiously (said to be the result of a dispute with Etchingham), Hendrix's father and members of Experience Hendrix, the organisation now handling the late guitarist's estate, looked on from the sidelines. Members of the Handel Society were not in evidence.

No. 67

Australian pop entrepreneur Robert Stigwood’s RSO organisation had “grand offices” here during the mid-Sixties. Stigwood’s private office was at 85 New Cavendish Street where, according to Cream lyricist Pete Brown (quoted in Christopher Sandford’s Clapton: Edge of Darkness) “a kind of court developed with Robert screaming on three phones, sending writs and simultaneously interviewing a new chauffeur.” Stigwood’s roster included Cream, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and the Bee Gees. He also had his own record label, Reaction, which released material by Jimi Hendrix, the Who, the Bee Gees and others.