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Diary of a Teddy Boy: A Memoir of the Long Sixties
Following his progress from ice-cream salesman to gambler, agent, record producer and traveller, the irrepressible Mim Scala takes us on a helter-skelter journey through Swinging London and its afterlife on the hippie trail. A must read for the arm chair traveller
252 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2000
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April 17, 2013
THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW BY ANDREW LYCETT
WRITEN by Andrew Lycett for The Independant, London 8th February 2001
An Irish paper missed the point when it compared Mim Scala's book about the "long Sixties" with Kerouac and Hunter S Thompson. Diary of a Teddy Boy, first published in Dublin last year, is a gentler, more entertaining read. It captures the excitement of a period, from the Suez crisis of 1956 to the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when social barriers broke down and confident youngsters such as Scala, whose family owned an ice-cream parlour, could prosper in the entertainment and music industries, cavort with fun-loving aristocrats, take masses of drugs, drop out, and still emerge, tolerably compos mentis.
"The Sixties had a rarefied atmosphere," Scala says. "So much was happening then and I was often there. But I was always a fringe player; I was never blinded by the dense fog of fame. Some people had to be there, but I was there because I wanted to be there." Scala ran a gambling den frequented by the artist Francis Bacon. He was agent to hell-raising actor Richard Harris. He sent his friend Patti Boyd along to audition for Dick Lester's film A Hard Days Night and she ended up dating Beatle George Harrison, one of the stars. Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix used to jam in his Hyde Park flat. He arranged Cat Steven's first record deal.
Scala's memoir works, when most tales of rock'n'roll excess are buried under a weight of their own self-importance, because he told it for a reason. In 1990, having decamped to Co Carlow to fish after 30 over-the-top years, he became a father for the first time, at the age of 50. "At that age, you become paranoid that you'll kick the bucket before your child knows your name," he said at his temporary base - the west London house of his friend Michael Pearson, once a high-living film producer and skipper of the yacht The Hedonist, now Viscount Cowdray, landowner.
Beset by intimations of mortality, Scala wrote his book to tell his son Freddy, now 11, about his former life-style. "I was looking for amazement, not like modern kids trying to get blotted out."
That sense of relating a personal story to his son gives Scala's book its voice. He eschews self-aggrandisement, grudges, or details of bad acid trips. Instead, he observes heady social change with amused detachment.
Of course there are rock'n'roll stories, and lots of them. Take the night in late 1967 when he picked up a beautiful blonde at the hip club, the Revolution. His friends Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Keith Moon were jamming (as they often did back at his flat). She was wearing nothing but a mink coat and smelt "irresistibly of expensive perfume and animal fur". Scala asked her to join him for the weekend at Aston Upthorpe, the 1,800 acre estate of his business partner Sir William Pigott-Brown, where cottages were let out to rock stars, including members of Traffic.
There "everybody got laid, stoned and drunk in the highest possible fashion". The girl was keen, but intimated problems. She was staying at Claridges with Huntington Hartford, one of the world's richest men. Scala picked up her luggage in his old Willis jeep, followed by Jones, Hendrix and assorted girls in the Rolling Stone's chauffeur-driven Bentley.
All very decadent, but Scala refuses to moralise. In his book, the English speaking world was experiencing such beneficial transformation that even the few casualties (such as Jones, who would hole up in his flat, eking out his final days on pork pies and drugs) were excusable. "The whole moral structure was changing. Before, everything was hypocritical. Once it began to get loose, it became more sensible."
But wasn't Sixties culture, with its vapid spirituality, equally hypocritical? "There are always people who are having a good time, and people who are not and resent it," he replies, refusing to be drawn.
In the flesh, Scala is not easy to place. The photographs in the book show him evolving from smart London mod to caftaned hippie. But these uniforms appear as disguises. Today, he wears an oversize white shirt with a Utah Fiddlers logo, he has a clipped, greying beard, and he occasionally dons tortoise-shell glasses that give him a studious look. Sixty years old and short, he could be a Spanish hidalgo or, perhaps, a worldly Jesuit priest.
Roman Catholicism was, it appears, an important influence. As a convent schoolboy, his painting of the Crucifixion won a competition and was sent to the Hungarian Cardinal Mindszenty, who was charged with treason by the communists in 1948. Even now, Scala talks about the importance of the moral sense drilled into him and how this kept him to the straight and narrow.
WRITEN by Andrew Lycett for The Independant, London 8th February 2001
An Irish paper missed the point when it compared Mim Scala's book about the "long Sixties" with Kerouac and Hunter S Thompson. Diary of a Teddy Boy, first published in Dublin last year, is a gentler, more entertaining read. It captures the excitement of a period, from the Suez crisis of 1956 to the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when social barriers broke down and confident youngsters such as Scala, whose family owned an ice-cream parlour, could prosper in the entertainment and music industries, cavort with fun-loving aristocrats, take masses of drugs, drop out, and still emerge, tolerably compos mentis.
"The Sixties had a rarefied atmosphere," Scala says. "So much was happening then and I was often there. But I was always a fringe player; I was never blinded by the dense fog of fame. Some people had to be there, but I was there because I wanted to be there." Scala ran a gambling den frequented by the artist Francis Bacon. He was agent to hell-raising actor Richard Harris. He sent his friend Patti Boyd along to audition for Dick Lester's film A Hard Days Night and she ended up dating Beatle George Harrison, one of the stars. Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix used to jam in his Hyde Park flat. He arranged Cat Steven's first record deal.
Scala's memoir works, when most tales of rock'n'roll excess are buried under a weight of their own self-importance, because he told it for a reason. In 1990, having decamped to Co Carlow to fish after 30 over-the-top years, he became a father for the first time, at the age of 50. "At that age, you become paranoid that you'll kick the bucket before your child knows your name," he said at his temporary base - the west London house of his friend Michael Pearson, once a high-living film producer and skipper of the yacht The Hedonist, now Viscount Cowdray, landowner.
Beset by intimations of mortality, Scala wrote his book to tell his son Freddy, now 11, about his former life-style. "I was looking for amazement, not like modern kids trying to get blotted out."
That sense of relating a personal story to his son gives Scala's book its voice. He eschews self-aggrandisement, grudges, or details of bad acid trips. Instead, he observes heady social change with amused detachment.
Of course there are rock'n'roll stories, and lots of them. Take the night in late 1967 when he picked up a beautiful blonde at the hip club, the Revolution. His friends Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Keith Moon were jamming (as they often did back at his flat). She was wearing nothing but a mink coat and smelt "irresistibly of expensive perfume and animal fur". Scala asked her to join him for the weekend at Aston Upthorpe, the 1,800 acre estate of his business partner Sir William Pigott-Brown, where cottages were let out to rock stars, including members of Traffic.
There "everybody got laid, stoned and drunk in the highest possible fashion". The girl was keen, but intimated problems. She was staying at Claridges with Huntington Hartford, one of the world's richest men. Scala picked up her luggage in his old Willis jeep, followed by Jones, Hendrix and assorted girls in the Rolling Stone's chauffeur-driven Bentley.
All very decadent, but Scala refuses to moralise. In his book, the English speaking world was experiencing such beneficial transformation that even the few casualties (such as Jones, who would hole up in his flat, eking out his final days on pork pies and drugs) were excusable. "The whole moral structure was changing. Before, everything was hypocritical. Once it began to get loose, it became more sensible."
But wasn't Sixties culture, with its vapid spirituality, equally hypocritical? "There are always people who are having a good time, and people who are not and resent it," he replies, refusing to be drawn.
In the flesh, Scala is not easy to place. The photographs in the book show him evolving from smart London mod to caftaned hippie. But these uniforms appear as disguises. Today, he wears an oversize white shirt with a Utah Fiddlers logo, he has a clipped, greying beard, and he occasionally dons tortoise-shell glasses that give him a studious look. Sixty years old and short, he could be a Spanish hidalgo or, perhaps, a worldly Jesuit priest.
Roman Catholicism was, it appears, an important influence. As a convent schoolboy, his painting of the Crucifixion won a competition and was sent to the Hungarian Cardinal Mindszenty, who was charged with treason by the communists in 1948. Even now, Scala talks about the importance of the moral sense drilled into him and how this kept him to the straight and narrow.
September 21, 2017
Cracking read.
June 14, 2023
It's been a while since I read this. I thought it was more about the 60s than the 50s the title would suggest. BUt I think it was pretty good,
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews