Nemo James - Autobiography

SOMETHING WILL TURN UP

by Nemo James. Chapter 15

N.B. It is 1972 and Nemo I had just driven out to Gstaad in Switzerland with Pete, the saxophonist who was also going to join the band. We were about to start work in the Palace Hotel with a top, jet set Italian band.

When we finally woke next morning I went straight over to the window. The scene outside was breathtaking. There had been a heavy snowfall during the night and everything was covered with a thick blanket of glistening snow. The sun was blazing and the streets were packed with people wearing fur coats and ski suits, neither of which I had ever seen worn in real life. What surprised me most of all was the holiday atmosphere you would expect to find at a Mediterranean summer resort. I had only ever known January as a freezing cold, depressing month that you tried to get through the best you could. It was not a month to see crowds of happy people on holiday. At times the number of people hobbling past on crutches made the high street look like an Après battle scene from Gone With The Wind. It wasn't surprising that our employers wouldn't allow us to ski.

We were staying in the Hotel Olden which was a small Swish chalet kind of hotel right in the centre of Gstaad and was owned by Renato's very good friend Faosto. As soon Faosto heard that he was bringing two musicians from England he insisted that Renato stay at his hotel and the whole band ate our evening meals there although being careful not to mention that he would charge the normal rate for all this and the prices brought tears to the eyes of all but the riches clients.

We had a couple of hours to kill before meeting Renato (the bandleader) so after an fantastic breakfast we went for a stroll along Gstaad's only main street. There were small, exclusive shops lining each side and the people that went in and out seemed to positively glow with the kind of affluence you rarely see in Peckham. We passed Chez Esta, a very fashionable café in the middle of the village and even at that off-peak hour it was packed. As the atmosphere soaked into me I felt an excitement that I hadn't felt since childhood.

It was only a couple of minute's walk before we came to the end of the village where the open-air ice ring was situated. Music was blaring out of the loudspeakers while skaters glided skilfully over the ice and I waited in vain to see some of the show offs come a cropper. The beauty of some of the women that passed by took my breath away and there were strange looking characters that looked like they had come straight from a film set. One man was wearing a huge Stetson hat and hairy snow boots that went right up to his knees. Another man wore a black cape over his shoulders like Count Dracula. There was an abundance of fur coats worn by men and women and to complete the extraordinary scene were the brightly coloured ski suits that solely designed to show off their owners rather than to have contact with snow as many of the owners had no intention of going anywhere near a ski slope.

Next to the ice rink was the trendy Charlie's Bar. We sat at a table outside and Pete being 10 years older and far more worldly than I suggestion we had this drink I had never heard of before called a kind of coffee called a "Cappuccino". Having only ever know a coffee you stick in a mug half filled with milk I was amazed to see this coffee had a mountain of whipped cream on top and quite unbelievable at the time, a little chocolate on the saucer. Was this luxury or what !With the blazing sun warming my face and filling my heart, I felt like I had arrived in paradise.

After lunch, Renato called for us and we followed him on the five mile drive to Launen where he had hired a chalet for us to stay while we were rehearsing. The roads were still covered in snow from the previous night's fall but I had bought some chains before leaving England so driving was reasonably safe and great fun. The scenery was astonishing and as we turned around one bend there was a spectacular mountain range that spread out over the entire landscape. Was it really possible that these sights existed on the same planet as Peckham?

Inside the chalet we were introduced to the rest of the band who were waiting eagerly to meet us. We set our gear up quickly and after going through a couple of songs Renato breathed a huge sigh of relief as he had still not actually heard either of us play. We put down our instruments and sat at a table discussing the rehearsal arrangements. This will be a good time to introduce you to The Renato Sambo Orchestra (all bands abroad were referred to as orchestras, regardless of size or instrumentation).

Including Pete and I, there were seven in the band. They were all around 30 years of age except for Renato who was 40. They all spoke fluent Italian, French, German and English and I was amazed at how they skipped from one language to another so effortlessly.

You have already met Renato but I will tell you what else I found out about him during that first week. He was well known in Gstaad and loved by everyone. Having spent a lifetime nurturing some very rich and influential friends he was now acknowledged as one of the top Jet Set singers on the circuit. Renato's greatest talent was off-stage where his magnetic charm and ability to socialise at any level was legendary. It was impossible not to like him. He was a true professional, always dressing immaculately and whilst not expecting us to meet his high dress standards, he insisted that we were always smart on stage. He was very generous and very honest, an extremely unusual combination for a bandleader. He knew exactly what his audience wanted and fed them great dollops of old romantic French and Italian songs at every opportunity. He was divorced and the only time I ever saw him sad was when he spoke of his daughter who was growing up without him. In short, Renato Sambo was the very essence of the word simpatico. It has to be said though that he was not a great singer and his voice which came almost entirely through his noise sounded like it was being played a kazoo.

Pete, the Englishman I had travelled out with, I can only describe as a miserable and touchy little sod. He was short and had all the stereotype small man hang-ups. Physically he wasn't ugly but he had a very unattractive personality made worse by one of the ugliest of all traits...meanness. At first he refused to buy proper snow boots and it was hilarious watching him slipping and sliding around the village insisting that his old London shoes were perfectly adequate. After crashing into a crowd of passers-by one day and being forced to endure the ridicule of a bunch of schoolchildren, he relinquished and bought himself a cheap pair of lace-up boots. They must have lain unwanted in the shop for twenty years before he came along. They were of excellent quality but unfortunately it took him several hours to put them on every day . He still lived with his parents and had never been married, though it was not for want of trying. I had to share a room with Pete and spent the whole time skating on thin ice as the tiniest thing sent him into a foul mood.

Mike was on drums. He was a straight-laced Englishman who had lived in Italy for many years and spoke Italian like a native. He had been the leader of a band that was very famous in Italy many years earlier. He was as bald as a billiard ball which would have been alright if he hadn't insisted on covering his head with a ridiculous looking Beatles wig that was already years out of fashion. What made it even more comical was that he had a permanent twitch of both eyebrows so that every ten seconds they would jerk upwards while the wig remained stationary. He wasn't a great drummer but he was very professional and reliable, both qualities that most bandleaders value above ability.

Now we come to Mario, the Italian bass player whom you had to know and see in action to believe my description of him. If you are a devout feminist and there are any men in the vicinity I advise you put away all sharp objects before reading any further.

Mario had the typical Latin lover kind of looks. He hated his curly, shoulder length hair so he spent most of his time trying to straighten it and some of the lotions he used to create this effect gave the impression he was wearing a wig made of wax. He had a fixation about his arse and was totally incapable of walking past a full length mirror without checking that the lines of his trousers fit snugly around the aforementioned arse. He had the uncontrollable habit that many Latin macho men had at that time, of rubbing his crotch while talking to people. Renato told him off for it on several occasions but he seemed to have absolutely no control over his hand.

His favourite phrase, which he was in the habit of repeating several times a day, was "all women are bitches!" and he regarded them as nothing more than walking vaginas. Being constantly afraid that people might think of him as a mere mortal he would at every opportunity make the following profound announcement,

"I have fucked women all over ze world. Ask any of zem and zey tell you I am ze best."

This was always said with seriousness and conviction which was why it was so amusing when one night a couple of women he had slept with told a large group of us that Mario was in fact, extremely forgettable in bed. One of them had us in hysterics when after waggling her little finger to demonstrate the size of his weapon, she told us that she could never have slept with him a second time because he "sounded like a donkey when he came." She then proceeded to mimic him.

"Oh baby, baby. hee haw. I'm coming, hee haw, hee haw."

As a bass player he was OK but he did have a wonderful singing voice. The funny thing was I don't think he ever realised what a good singer he was. It was certainly not out of modesty so I can only assume that all thoughts not connected directly to his penis were disregarded. Finally, it must be said that he could be very charming and sometimes, to my annoyance I actually found myself liking him, until the next day when he invariably said or did something obnoxious.

Paolo, the Italian trumpet player was tall, thin and happy. He was liked by everyone, except perhaps his wife. He wasn't a great musician but he had a beautiful haunting falsetto voice that many Italian bands utilise so well. He and Mario were the greatest of friends and they spent most of their time hunting women.

Finally there was Gianni who was in charge of us when Renato wasn't around. He was a brilliant Hammond organist and musical arranger. He was light years ahead of us all musically and being a kind and patient man he was always there to help and encourage me. He was very conscious of being extremely overweight and not having much luck with women he took refuge in his music. His loneliness wasn't helped by the fact that his two good friends, Mario and Paulo deserted him the moment a woman appeared.

As a band, they had been with Renato for years and thought the world of him. We all got on well and had great fun. It took a while for me to get used to the volatile Italian way and I was very concerned the first time I saw them explode into a terrible argument over the dinner table. I thought they were going to kill each other until Mike explained that they were only arguing about whether the Ferrari Dino was a better car than the Porsche Carrera.

Pete and I moved into the chalet with the rest of the band and settled down to a week's rehearsal before starting the gig. We rehearsed most of the day and went to the Hotel Olden every night where Renato had arranged for us to have dinner. We had the full set menu and I was served food I had never even heard of before: asparagus, artichoke, croissant, rösti, fondue, raclet, coupe Denmark, sorbet, the list seemed endless. Every meal was an adventure and there was nothing I didn't like. Like most people I knew I had regarded a meal out in a Wimpy Bar as being the height of luxury. I had never even drunk wine before but soon found myself acquiring a taste for it and set to work to catch up on all the wasted years.

After dinner, some of the other Italian musicians from the village would join us in a game of Yatzee and at times the noise from the excitable Italians was quite horrendous. Every time someone got a good score they would shout "cazzone!" at the tops of their voices. "Cazzone" is not strictly speaking Yatzee terminology but the Italian word for "big prick". I know in English "big prick" is regarded as a negative expression but I can only assume that in Italian it a great compliment. Although the noise got a bit much at times, I loved the open show of emotion and affection shown by the Italians and at times I felt we were all one big family. In contrast, the few English musicians that worked in the village got their after dinner entertainment from slouching over a bar and moaning about the Italians.

At last the big day arrived for us to start work at the Greengo nightclub in the Palace Hotel. It was a small, luxurious club, decorated entirely in green velvet with large, silver, mushroom shaped objects covering the ceiling. We started work at 10.00 p.m. when the club was still empty but it soon filled up until it suddenly transformed itself into a film set, full of the most beautiful people wearing the most incredible clothes. There were famous models, film stars, pop stars and playboys everywhere you looked. Over the next few weeks our audience included David Niven, Bridget Bardot, The Kennedys, Roman Polanski, Peter Sellers, Tom Jones, Elizabeth Taylor and countless other celebrities.

Renato seemed to know everyone personally and one night he whispered to me whilst we were playing,
"Look! Gunter Sachs has just walked in."
"Who!" I whispered back
"Gunter Sachs. The playboy. Don't tell me you've never heard of him?" I shrugged my shoulders.
"Sorry. What does he do?" Renato was exasperated.
"He's a playboy."

Although I had often heard the word "playboy", but when I thought about it I wasn't sure what it actually meant. It certainly never occurred to me that it was an actual job so I just stood there looking blank. After that Renato gave up on pointing people out to me.

The next day we moved into a beautiful chalet provided for us by the Palace Hotel. It was near the centre of Gstaad and as it had a kitchen and large living room it was perfect for inviting people back after work so most nights there was a party or some kind of get together. We started taking our meals at the Palace Hotel where we were treated like royalty and served food even better than at the Olden. Renato rented a whole chalet to himself in an area full of celebrities where his neighbours were Peter Sellers and Yehudi Menuhin.

Having got the rehearsals out of the way we had more time for socialising and that was when I discovered yet another major perk of the job. The village was swarming with horny young girls from local finishing schools. Most of them were American and I don't know if it was part of their culture or the fact that there was a shortage of young men in the village but I was amazed at how forward they were.

It must have been the best time and place ever to be young, free and single. Sex was almost compulsory. VD and other infections were easily cured and as long as you were reasonably selective, difficult to catch, although Mario frequently boasted that he had caught VD 35 times and used to get a discount at the clinic in Sweden when he was there. There was no AIDS, no guilt and every girl I met was on the pill. Virginity was regarded almost as an illness that had to be cured.

I had friends from all different walks of life and it saddens me now to think how in our youth we live in a melting pot of people from different social backgrounds but then go our own separate economic and intellectual ways. As a teenager, my old Austin A40 was a novelty to my rich friends and some girls who had known nothing but luxury all their lives preferred driving with me than in their friends' flash sports cars. If I had been twenty years older, the same car would have giving me the social standing of a leper with halitosis. You had to laugh when you saw it parked in a row of Ferraris, Porsches and Lamborghinis.

By English standards I had always been reasonably successful with the opposite sex (by Italian standards I had lived like a monk) but nothing compared to the success I had in Gstaad. The first few weeks, I went crazy and dated or slept with every girl I could. Most of them were from very rich or famous families though I had never heard of most of them so I assumed they were only famous in the USA.

I have never been one for going out with lots of different women so after the novelty wore off I settled down with an Australian girl called Sarah. She had the most beautiful face and hair but from the neck down she looked like a lumberjack. She had no trace of an Australian accent as it had been bred out of her by her mother who owned the most exclusive ladies finishing school in Australia. When her mother found out that having spent a fortune on sending her precious daughter to one of the most exclusive resorts in the world, she was now going out with a scruffy, long haired, penniless musician she went berserk and flew all the way from Australia just to split us up.

I then entered a very strange and memorable relationship with Jenny, the daughter of Lloyd Thaxton who hosted "The Lloyd Thaxton Show" in the States which had won 5 Emmy's and 15 Emmy award nominations. Needless to say I had never heard of him but to be fair I don't think anyone outside the States had either. After Jenny's parents split up, her mother married a millionaire and as she didn't need the maintenance from her ex-husband, she gave the money to Jenny which left her free to do whatever she wanted. Despite the luxury of her upbringing, Jenny was not in the slightest bit ostentatious or pretentious and used to love driving through the village in my "funny little car with the steering wheel on the wrong side."

Jenny was stunning. She was petite, with long golden hair like the kind you see in the after shot in hair commercials and like in the commercials, heads would turn when she walked past . She was beautiful in a warm, friendly way and luckily for me, she hated the flash men that tried to impress her with money and fast cars. She had one quality that I liked above all else... she was utterly bullshit proof, which meant she was safe from the predatory Mario and his type.

Jenny's life in the States seemed so remote from my own that when she talked about it, it meant no more to me than if someone were describing a dream they had the night before. When she told me she lived in Bel Air in Los Angeles or about her Chevrolet Camaro waiting at home in the triple garage it simply didn't register with me. She never stopped asking me to visit her in the States in the summer and although I agreed and I would have loved to have gone, I knew I never would. How can you visit someone in a dream?

In England, I had been regarded by many of my friends as a man of the world but there in Gstaad and especially with Jenny, I felt very naive and innocent. Adolescent boys are constantly being told about the delights of sleeping with older, more experienced women but personally I have always found that to be a fallacy. Jenny was two years younger than me and yet it was she who first opened my eyes to sex.

Until then, sex for me was a matter of fumbling with someone in the dark whilst stumbling across assorted pleasures. As I had never had any complaints, I thought in common with most men that I had to be a good lover. The revelation with Jenny was that she quite simply had no inhibitions and was happy to tell me exactly what she wanted, though I did wish at times she had done so with less vulgarity. It was a vulgarity born from her sense of freedom and whilst I loved her free spirit as a friend, it was that which prevented me from falling in love with her. I was young and very romantic, so to be told whilst walking with her through the snow on a beautiful moonlit night, "come on let's hurry back, I'm dying for a fuck," didn’t quite fit in with my "Gone with the Wind" idea of romance. We became very close but saw each other as nothing more than really good mates that could have a laugh together and explore the wonders of sex.

My inexperience was often a source of great amusement to the rest of the band. On one occasion a crowd of us were sitting around a table in the Greengo with a few tasty snacks in front of us. One plate contained some weird looking grapes and next to it was a plate of small nuts. I didn't like the look of the grapes so I grabbed a handful of nuts and threw them in my mouth whilst taking care to act as cooool as the people around me. The nuts were disgusting and when I conceded that they were too tough for me to break with my teeth, I discretely spat them out into my serviette. I would have got away with it if it hadn't been for Mario shouting at the top of his voice,

"Hey look! Derek has just tried to eat the olive stones!"
How was I to know that the grapes were really olives and the nuts were the stones that people had spat out? I had never even seen an olive before.

On another occasion I was invited to a birthday dinner for an Arab princess. It was held in the fine dining restaurant at the Palace Hotel and our enormous table was full of some of the richest people in the world. Everything was incredibly plush and there were waiters hovering around everywhere. If I took a sip of wine, a waiter replenished my glass. When I dropped my knife, a waiter appeared from nowhere to replace it with another. I had the feeling that if I farted, a waiter would rush over and spray my arse with perfume, though I refrained from putting it to the test. That was the night I discovered (the hard way, as always) that when squeezing a lemon onto your fish, it is best to put your hand over the lemon, otherwise everyone around you gets soaked.

We were not allowed to ski but it never bothered me as there were so many other great things to do. I could go from bar to bar playing Yatzee, take day trips to the enchanting city of Montreux or eat cheese with a beautiful girl in the cosy little village of Gruyere. There was also Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich, so many fantastic places to visit and for the first time in my life I had some serious money to spend.

Gstaad is such a small village that you can walk from one end to the other in a couple of minutes and yet it sometimes took half an hour to walk just a few yards as I stopped to talk to friends along the way. Of course, Après ski was the best time of all, when there was standing room only in all the cafés and bars. There were many bands in the area but The Renato Sambo Orchestra was "The" Band. It wasn't unusual for us to be sitting in a cafe together when someone who had seen us playing in the Greengo would send us over a bottle of champagne in appreciation of our music.

We were allowed to use the indoor swimming pool at the Palace, so after a hard day at the cafes I would spend a couple of hours sunbathing under the solarium lamps where I could watch the snow fall only inches from the large patio window where I lay. Sometimes I even saw deer foraging for food amongst the nearby pine trees. Then a quick swim, a shower and it was time to get ready for a fantastic meal. All of that cost me nothing.

What more can I say? It was the perfect existence for a young man and for the first time since turning professional I had a secure job. Renato had been working constantly for many years and as he was delighted with my playing there was no reason to believe that I wouldn't be with him for many years to come. At last I could save some money until it was time to put a band of my own together. Everything was perfect, except for one thing that might have slipped your mind.... I am a dreamer.

I like being a dreamer despite all the trouble it has caused me over the years. However, dreamers have one major problem… we have to dream about we don't have. If you have a Rolls Royce in the drive you don't dream about owning a Rolls Royce, you must upgrade your dream to a yacht or something equally desirable to you. As we came to the end of our contract I became very restless. I had no doubt that all of Renato's gigs would be as good as Gstaad and working for him would be one long party with the occasional break for holidays. All the guys in the band went on continuously about how great Japan was and there was talk of going back there soon. We were booked to play in Sweden in May and the Italians when into raptures when they talked about their experiences there. Mario only had to hear the word Stockholm and it was like pulling the string of one of those dolls that repeat the same message,

"Zere are beautiful women everywhere you look and you can fuck as many as you want. I fuck five or six every day and because I fuck zem so good zey come back every day for more." Believe me, he meant every word of it.

Even Gianni had managed to find true love in Stockholm the previous year and his eyes misted over every time we talked about the magic city. Yes, Gstaad had been fantastic but I was young and eager for new experiences.

By the middle of March, Gstaad started to empty slowly and it was time to leave for a two week gig at the Hilton Hotel in Dusseldorf. Jenny wanted me to take her and although I wasn't keen on the idea she had a way of always getting what she wanted. When I look back, it seems extraordinary how happy I was to leave such a perfect existence. As we drove through the village we must have stopped ten times to get out the car and say goodbye to friends that were passing.

It is impossible to exaggerate the profound effect that winter in Gstaad had on my life. Until then, I never realised that such a lifestyle existed and I wanted to be a part of it. I loved the warmth and affection that the Italians openly displayed. I loved the food and the service. I loved how cosmopolitan the village was and how everyone mixed regardless of race or class. I loved the music, the girls, and the wine. I loved my new life but most of all, I loved the idea that I would never have to go back to my old life in pubs, dance halls and working men's clubs. From then on, everything would be plain sailing until the day I had my own band and became rich and famous. How good life can be.