Great, no knickers! said Lennon as I walked down the stairs
HER obituaries told only half the story. Now, in the joyously candid words of her memoirs, Cilla Black reveals the truth about her fairytale rise in a special threepart series. On Saturday, she told of getting her first big break at Liverpool’s Cavern Clu
POP in the Sixties was a world of little white lies. I found that out early, with my first single, Love of The Loved, by Lennon and McCartney. Brian Epstein, who was the boys’ manager as well as mine, let the media think the song had been specially written for me by John and Paul.
It was cobblers, of course. I’d heard The Beatles doing the song myself during lunchtime sessions at the Cavern.
Worse, though, were the lies about my private life. Brian was protective to the point of paranoia about even minute personal details: sales, he insisted, could drop to rock-bottom overnight if fans discovered their favourite pin-up was going steady, or even married.
In answer to any prying questions about Bobby Willis’s constant presence at my side, I had to say that my feller was just my road manager. I could have added that he was also a talented songwriter, who had penned Shy of Love, the B-side on my first single.
I wanted a No 1 very much, but Love of The Loved peaked at No 35. Just before Christmas I recorded my second single, Anyone Who Had A Heart, and I told Bobby on New Year’s Eve that I wouldn’t settle for anything less than a chart- topper. ‘Then we won’t,’ he replied, resolutely. ‘Not now: not ever.’
our New Year’s pledge came true: by the end of February 1964, I was top of the hit parade.
The truth is I couldn’t believe it was happening, because I never really rated the song, a Burt Bacharach number, as No 1 material. I knew I’d arrived, though, when a dozen lusty workmen wolf-whistled me from a building site near Leicester Square and began to sing the chorus! That was as exciting, in a daft way, as collecting my NME poll-winner’s award as Top Female Vocalist a few weeks later.
Not all the attention was so great. This was the Beatlemania era, when fans could get out of control. Leaving the Southern TV studios one evening, I was mobbed by a crowd of girls who tore the buttons off my shiny black Mary Quant mac and ripped it to shreds. I was in shock, really upset. I loved that mac, and you can’t repair plastic.
Being a pop star could be dangerous work. To promote my next song, You’re My World, a photographer took me to the roof of the President Hotel off Russell Square and had me stand on a narrow wall, just a ledge really, with my arms thrown wide.
There was nothing between me and the ground below but certain death. Because I was young, obliging and stupid, I did as I was told.
The publicity helped do the trick, though, because You’re My World became my second No 1.
Success came in other ways. I joined a show at the London Palladium called Startime, with singer Frankie Vaughan and comedian Tommy Cooper as the headliners. Between May and December, I did 13 shows a week, a total of over 400 performances — but I didn’t understand at first what a colossal privilege this was.
I was naive and a bit arrogant, and I got into the bad habit of missing the final curtain calls with the rest of the cast. I just couldn’t see the point of walking back down a load of steps when I’d already been on and sung my heart out. I’d rather get my tights washed and head back to the hotel.
The stage manager was so angry that he threatened me with a £5 fine if I ever did it again. That cured me.
FOR my 21st birthday, Brian took me to dinner at Le Caprice with George Harrison, who had also turned 21 that year, and then to a party at his Knightsbridge flat. I phoned my Mam from there, and spoke to all my relatives. I really did miss Scottie Road that night. I’d much rather be having a knees-up with them than standing around at a cocktail party.
Bobby and me never had wine in restaurants: we’d order steak and Coca-Cola. In fact, I’d never touched alcohol till well past my 21st.
If grown-up glamour was a puzzle to me, I loved shopping expeditions with my pal Cathy McGowan [presenter of Ready Steady Go!]. We’d take a joyful cruise in her Mini round the King’s Road and Carnaby Street boutiques, spend an absolute fortune on miniskirts and dresses in ten minutes, and have a girlie gossip of the ‘Have you heard?/ She never did!’ variety.
one thing I missed was Liverpool’s club scene. Everywhere in London catered for an older generation — until the Ad Lib opened in a Soho penthouse, with fur-covered walls and an aquarium filled with piranhas.
The Stones, the Animals and the Hollies all went there. I used to fancy Keith Richards on the quiet. He was just the kind of pretty boy that caught my fancy at that time.
The Ad Lib’s DJ never played our own music to us — it was all heavy American rock. We loved going mad to Daddy Rollin’ Stone by Derek Martin, and sharing the floor with hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, celebrity photographers David Bailey and Terry o’Neill, and actors Terence Stamp and Michael Caine. I remember the celebrated transsexual April Ashley was there one night, in a gob- smacking see-through black chiffon top that drew a lot of attention.
Everyone was drinking Mateus Rosé wine, and then whisky and Coke, until The Beatles came back from the States with a new cult drink — Bourbon and Seven Up. I tried to get the taste for it, though one glass used to last me all night, and by the time Bobby and I got back to the hotel I was ready to hit the sack.
If I didn’t drink much, I certainly wasn’t interested in drugs. I tried a joint once and it made me sick. And once, at Brian’s house, lounging around with The Beatles, someone passed me a long roll-up and invited me to ‘ turn on’. Taking drugs with The Beatles — that is very rock’n’roll, wouldn’t you think?
But the joint was all soggy-looking at the end. ‘oh no,’ I thought, ‘this is not nice and it’s certainly not hygienic.’
The extraordinary thing was that when I smoked an ordinary cigarette on Juke Box Jury, Brian told me off for being unladylike.
John and Paul wrote my next single, It’s For You, and when in 1965 Granada Television decided to do a big budget show called The Music of Lennon And McCartney, I was in it singing their song.
We filmed it at Granada’s studios in Manchester and I had to walk down the stairs, miming to the song, while the boys sat at the bottom, looking up at me.
As I walked past, John whispered: ‘Great! No knickers!’ I reeled backwards, hand to my mouth, and couldn’t wait to get back to the dressing-room to check he was joking.
You’re My World was the song I sang at the Royal Variety Performance that year. I was a bundle of nerves at the thought of meeting the Queen. I’d seen her once before, when she visited Liverpool, and I was utterly convinced she would recognise me as the girl she had waved to on the Scottie Road.
My head was f ull of r ules and protocol: how I must call her ‘ Your Majesty’ and not ‘ Your Royal Highness’ when she first spoke to me, and how she was ‘ Ma’am’ to rhyme with Spam, but her sister Margaret was ‘marm’ to rhyme with arm.
When it came to the royal line-up, Tommy Cooper was standing next to me. He said: ‘Ma’am, are you going to the Cup Final at Wembley next year?’ The Queen regretted that she would not be there. ‘ That’s a shame,’ said Tommy. ‘Can I have your ticket?’
After my version of You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ reached No 2 — it was kept off the top spot by the Righteous Brothers’ recording of the same song — Bobby and I set off on a world tour, first to Australia and then the States.
Brian had arranged for my U.S. debut to be on the Ed Sullivan show, America’s biggest variety programme. But it started badly: the act before me was a troupe of trained chimps that were supposed to ride motorbikes around a track.
The studio was too small and the chimps kept crashing. Then they started fighting, in their frilly boy and girl uniforms. Then it got even more physical … Ed was horrified.
His show went out to 80 million God-fearing Americans. He told the cameras to cut straight to me, and, before I was ready, he was giving me the big build-up: ‘Now we have a great Welsh singer, from Wales in England. Cilla Black!’
Back home, Brian was treating me as wonderfully as ever. For my 24th birthday in 1967, he arranged for my name to be spelled out in lights over Piccadilly Circus.
He got me a West End role, opposite Frankie Howerd in Way Out In Piccadilly, a revue by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. Frankie used to tease me for being flat-chested — he called me ‘the girl with two backs’. And then he had the nerve to tell everyone I was ‘common as muck’.
But what Brian really wanted for me was my own TV show. He was so excited when he fixed up a deal with the BBC — and crestfallen when I turned it down. There were too many strings attached: they wanted me to be the Eurovision Song entrant, but Sandie Shaw had won the previous year and I knew there wasn’t a hope of a British girl winning two years running.
BOBBY and I went on holiday to Portugal. We were sitting in a village bar overlooking the Gulf of Cadiz, s haring a bottle of champagne with Tom Jones, when a waiter hurried over and blurted out: ‘your manager’s dead.’ I was devastated. It took me months to come to terms with Brian’s death. To this day, I’m convinced it was an accident. He was found on his bed, dead from an overdose, but it couldn’t have been deliberate. It just couldn’t.
Bobby became worried at how hard I took it. He prescribed work, and lots of it, to get me back on my feet. So we went back to the BBC, and told them I’d do the show.
All my friends crowded round to make it a success: Tom, Ringo, Lulu, Frankie, and comedians like Les Dawson and Spike Milligan too. I sang Moon River with Henry Mancini himself. Among the firstnight telegrams was one from Gracie Fields, which I treasure.
There was an uproar at the BBC over my studio warm-ups, though all I did was sing a few raunchy pub songs with the audience, to get a friendly ambience going.
By 1969, Bobby told me that, though Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise were said to be the highestpaid artistes at the BBC, the real bill-topper was me, because they had to split their fee between them.
But it wasn’t enough. Bobby came back one day from a meeting at the BBC’s offices at Portland Place and said the executives had discussed me as though I was just a packet of soap powder: something to be sold.
It confirmed what I knew: this was a ruthless business, and the party wasn’t going to last for ever.
No more white lies: I had my Bobby, but I needed something else. I wanted to be a mother.
What’s It all about? by Cilla Black is published by Ebury, £8.99. © Cilla Black 2003. Offer price £6.74 (25 per cent discount) until august 15. Order at mailbookshop.co.uk, p&p free on orders over £12. the fee for this article is being donated to Great Ormond street hospital on behalf of the author’s estate. Readers who wish to donate to the hospital should visit gosh.org/donate or send a cheque made out to Great Ormond street Children’s Charity to Great Ormond street hospital, 40 Bernard street, London WC1N 1LE, marked supporters’ services and quoting Cilla’s name.