The One & Only: Peter Perrett, Homme Fatale

THE ONE & ONLY

Peter Perrett, Homme Fatale

By Nina Antonia

Updated and revised 2015

About this Smashwords product

This is an updated version of Nina Antonia’s cult classic rock biography of The Only Ones’ front man, Peter Perrett. With a new introduction by John Cooper-Clarke

This edition has a lengthy additional chapter which brings it bang up to date (June 2015) and also includes an exclusive interview with Peter Perrett in 2015 in which he talks about deeply personal matters such as death and his love for his wife, Zena. The lyrics for a new song penned for Zena are also included as additional material.

Nina Antonia's biography is a roller-coaster ride through one of rock’s wildest, most unpredictable careers. Granted exclusive access to Perrett himself and everyone who matters in this extraordinary story, Antonia unflinchingly traces his path from privileged childhood to heavy duty drug dealer; from obscurity to decadent, promiscuous, heroin-addicted rock icon; from antique-filled mansion to mouldering south London basement... Yet here, too, is the remarkable love story of Perrett's 40-year marriage to ‘soul mate’ Zena, which survived all the highs and lows and led him, eventually, to redemption and creative rebirth.

‘Enthralling reading,’ J. Hunter Bennett, Hitlist

‘A richly detailed account that effortlessly negotiates Perrett’s private peccadilloes and his public life’ Mojo

‘Nina writes, seen her riot.’ Peter Doherty (Libertines)

‘The Only Ones were ‘my’ band... I went everywhere to see them.’ Johnny Marr (The Smiths)

Also available as a paperback from all good book shops and online retailers

About the Author

NINA ANTONIA is considered the grande dame of rock biography, with a penchant for the darkest, most troubled stars, and a talent for excavating uncomfortable truths as well as hidden joys and beauty. Previous works include the authorised biography of the legendary New York Dolls/Heartbreakers guitarist Johnny Thunders, which has been in print for almost 30 years. In 2013, Peter Doherty appointed Antonia as his literary agent and editor; together they produced his second book From Albion to Shangri-La. Antonia lives in London.

Published by Thin Man Press at Smashwords

Copyright © Nina Antonia 2015

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of

the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial

purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own

copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

The print edition of this book is available at all good stores and online retailers

ISBN 978-0-9930141-1-6

Contents

Preface by John Cooper-Clarke

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue 2015

2015 Catch Up Interview with Peter Perrettby Nina Antonia

Additional Material - lyrics of 'Sea Voyager', a new song for Xena by Peter Perrett

Other Titles From Thin Man

Preface

by John Cooper Clarke

January 2015

How those catchy hooks, those contagious melodies only serve to drag you into their corrosive world of human decrepitude. A voice that aches like the yearning snarl of a jaded child; Peter Perrett the human remains of some scuffed aristocracy.

A man beyond help.

The music is all electric guitars, exquisite arrangements and drums from down in the basement.

The Only Ones. Try to forget them.

I dare you.

The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,

Each glow-worm winks her spark,

Let us get home before the night grows dark:

For clouds may gather

Tho’ this is summer weather,

Put out the lights and drench us thro’;

Then if we lost our way what should we do?

(From The Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti)

Chapter One

Pale Sister of the Night

While the rest of the world looked to the skies on that sultry July night in 1969, transported by the euphoria of science fiction becoming fact, the young couple were rapt in the first sweep of love-making. As Neil Armstrong bobbed about on the moon’s pitted surface, Peter Perrett and Xenoulla Kakoulli consummated their tryst, tenderly oblivious to Richard Nixon’s declaration that it was, The greatest week in the creation of the world. For the moment the lovers felt safe, unaware that Xenoulla’s father Dimitris had not only alerted the entire Greek community to be on the look-out for the runaways, but was conducting his own door-to-door search. From congested Catford to the leafier glades of Forest Hill, Dimitris roared as he roamed, armed with a shotgun and a short-fuse temper.

Although more reserved in their angst, Peter’s parents, Albert and Amelia, were equally distraught about the union. University and hushed days spent in scholarly pursuit should have beckoned their only child, not the seductive embrace of a strange girl.

Whilst Dimitris Kakoulli made a public display of his disapproval, Albert and Amelia paced their neat, second-floor flat in the large Victorian house where the family had lived since moving from Brockley to Forest Hill in 1956. It had seemed like the right kind of area to bring up a child. To the Perretts, Forest Hill was a haven of hilly avenues free from the inner-city claustrophobia that had begun to close in on the outskirts of their neighbourhood. Its fading gentility had appealed to Amelia, conjuring up phantom traces of a rose-tinted past where fine ladies sipped Earl Grey tea from bone china. Even if prosperity’s dreams were on the decline, it still seemed a place for aspirations, and young Peter would wear the heavy crown of their expectations.

The investiture of baby Peter Albert Neil Perrett took place on April 8th, 1952 at King’s College Hospital, Camberwell. After a difficult pregnancy, Peter’s safe arrival was an answered prayer. The child that Albert and Amelia had waited so long for had finally made the mortal starting line, unlike the mournful procession of earlier miscarriages constituting a tragic litany of disembodied ghost brothers and sisters. A black ribbon of misfortune threaded through the maternal lineage, stretching back to the gas chambers of World War II where most of Amelia’s relatives met their tragic end. Amelia Leopoldina Fischer escaped to Vienna only to be incarcerated for the dubious crime of socialism. On release, the young woman and her first husband fled on a boat down the Danube, out of the Austrian Empire and bound for occupied Palestine. There Amelia met her second husband who was a terrorist, and though this marriage was also short-lived it produced one daughter, Edith.

It was against the harsh backdrop of the two thousand year old Middle East conflict that Amelia encountered Albert Perrett. Albert was an Englishman who, having joined the Palestine police force had been appointed as a chief prosecution officer. One of the last trials he supervised before returning to London with Amelia would become known as the Tommy ‘Just Like That’ Cooper and the Opium Jukebox Case. The fez¬-wearing funny man and his wife (who turned King’s evidence) were members of a troupe of travelling players who had been caught smuggling opium and hashish inside a jukebox.

The Britain where Mr and Mrs Perrett began their new life had also entered the jukebox age, although its use was not quite as nefarious as Tommy Cooper’s Palestinian playlist. By the mid-1950’s no self-respecting coffee bar was without a Wurlitzer. Most of the sounds were black hits bleached for the white market, or the milkshake froth of Doris Day and Perry Como. Like a cleansing storm, the clouds of rock ‘n’ roll were gathering. It would be some time before the implications struck the insular Perrett residence, where a refined way of life had been cultivated by a mother who erred toward the snobbish, and an upright, principled father. Albert Perrett was an idealistic man, like so many of his generation, possessed of an almost utopian belief in the power of education. His own ambitions having been foiled by economic necessity, Mr Perrett believed that knowledge was the golden gift he would give to his son. Unable to continue legal training in England, where he hoped to practise, Albert and his brother set up a firm of building contractors, Elf & Sons. The rest of Albert’s time was dedicated to nurturing his prodigious child. While other boys mangled toys and grazed their knees, Peter Perrett enjoyed a quiet game of chess, as he recalls: "My father came from South London, from a working class family.

He wasn’t allowed to read books; if his father caught him, he would beat him. At the age of 13 he was supporting his parents and six brothers and sisters and he had about four jobs. He was self-educated and because of that, education was very important to him. My father educated me up until the age of five when I went to Holy Trinity primary school. At the age of four I knew all my times tables, I could do simple algebra and I could play chess. My father took me to a psychologist to have an IQ test. Later he told me that it was immeasurable, close to 200. I was really into Maths, I found it fun at that age, and then I went to Holy Trinity. I was put a year ahead so I was with older kids, which meant that I had to repeat the last year of primary school because I wasn’t old enough to go to secondary school. I stayed and did the year again and that’s when I started being naughty. I used to correct the teachers when they got things wrong. I was bored by it."

Just a bus ride away, young Xenoulla was too exhausted to have made the acquaintance of monotony: I come from a large Greek Cypriot immigrant family. I came to England when I was three. We settled in south-east London and eventually moved to a house in Catford. I was the oldest of a family of eight children including myself. Most of my childhood was spent being like a mother. I didn’t really have a childhood; it was mainly bringing up kids and doing housework. By the time I was eight, I was earning money from making clothes for dolls. I missed quite a lot of my primary school years ‘cos I was staying at home looking after babies to help my mother, Loulla. She used to work in the day and she had an evening job as well.

Though their backgrounds were very different, Xenoulla and Peter were both searching for a means of escape. For all the apparent niceties of Peter Perrett’s background, a cotton-wool neurosis took the place of clear affection between mother and son. Albert was ready to cut the apron strings once Peter had taken his eleven-plus.

Peter’s excellent results were rewarded by a scholar-ship. Mr Perrett’s decision to send his son to Bancroft’s boarding school in Woodford Green, Essex, was intended to be a privilege and not the punishment Peter took it as. The English myth of character-building via the public school system was laid on already insecure foundations. Ensconced at Bancroft’s, Peter suffered under a bullying regime where brutality was the team badge and sensitivity the bait, until he learned to fight back: I was really unhappy there, I couldn’t understand why they’d sent me away and that’s when I started getting into lots of trouble. The first year I got beaten up every single day. The prefects were allowed to cane you and the older boys would beat you up. As soon as I entered the second year, I started beating up the younger boys. Once I got into the third year I realised I wasn’t into that.

With the milky tenderness of the child who tries, Peter fuelled his father’s dreams with a feigned interest in becoming a scientist, when in truth the only goal he aspired to was on a football field. By the time he reached his early teens, the pout turned into a scowl and Peter was ready to drop a personal H-bomb - not only on his parents’ hopes but on everyone representing authority. While he grew his hazel locks over his collar, the allure of music and its associated rebel tendencies displaced sport as his abiding passion. He carried his 45s like a fledgling pop assassin, with a vinyl armoury of The Beatles, Yardbirds, Kinks and Stones.

In common with those other pretty boys Marc Bolan and David Bowie, who would also go on to wrap ‘Sarf London’ identities around their vocal chords, Peter began the flowering of his style in the narcissistic threads of Mod. By 15, learning to smoke and ride a scooter were the only subjects Peter studied. The academic halo had not just slipped, it was deliberately thrown away. After resoundingly poor examination results, Bancroft’s saw fit to expel Master Perrett, marking his file Disruptive Influence, a critique he would not have disagreed with, as he explains: In a way I’d lost my childhood. Going to public school was a total void. I only took six ‘O’ levels because I was stopped from taking Chemistry, Physics, History and Maths. I’d been barred from those subjects. I wasn’t allowed into the Physics class because I’d get up on the desk and start singing Small Faces’ songs in the middle of a lesson. I lit a fire in a desk during Maths and was banned from History as punishment for refusing to take part in a rugby match. I was a very angry young man. I had a lot of violence inside of me. I thought learning was a total waste of time.

The shimmering summer of ‘67 was a fine time to face expulsion. Peter, whose hair was now even longer, progressed from Mod to Hippy to greet the psychedelic dawn. Wandering into Covent Garden, he joined the glittering stream of flower children in their diaphanous attire of Indian silks and Portobello Market make-believe, searching for the Electric Garden before it blossomed into Middle Earth. Peter spent the summer months in a swirling pageant of events, his large green eyes flickering like strobes, set off against nightclub light shows as he blotted out parental warnings with the full throttle of Pink Floyd: Out of the English groups that there were around to see in ‘67, Pink Floyd were the best. Sometimes the whole set would just be two half-hour instrumentals and quite often Syd wouldn’t show up. I went specifically to see them at the Windsor National Jazz and Blues Festival and they announced that he hadn’t turned up. It was such a fucking let down.

A more pleasing event from Peter’s perspective was the Freak Community’s coming out ball - the 14-hour ‘Technicolour Dream’ - held in Alexandra Palace. Somewhere in the region of ten thousand crazy daisies and dandies traipsed into the vast glass pavilion, paying one guinea per person in aid of the financially beleaguered underground paper International Times (IT). As records of attendance vary, it is reasonable to assume that any serious attempt at a head count was a stoned affair. Brian Jones was rumoured to be there, slumped in Moroccan robes. John Lennon arrived in an Afghan coat and granny glasses. A rainbow of lights and music turned Ally Pally into a throbbing kaleidoscopic bauble. As the moon made way for the sun, Pink Floyd took to the stage but Barrett was out of orbit - even the white Stratocaster hanging limply around his neck failed to anchor him.

Autumn term began with Peter enrolled in the quaintly titled Haberdashers’ Aske’s school in Hatcham. The former guild-funded independent day school with its prestigious reputation had no idea they had taken on such a totally unearthed live wire. Ex-pupil Steve Nice (later to become Steve Harley of Cockney Rebel) recalls Peter as being moody. Needless to say, Perrett flagrantly violated the school motto which was ‘Serve and Obey’. Peter: I was there for four terms. At the end of each term, the headmaster brought me and my dad in and said unless I changed I would be expelled. I was very juvenile for my age I’d make stupid noises in class and sing songs like Arthur Brown’s ‘I am the God of Hell Fire!’ I started thinking of myself as a communist and an anarchist. I didn’t know what either of them were but I thought they sounded good. There was this thing called an UCCA form which you filled in to apply for University, but they didn’t want me to put in for it because they wanted me to do an ‘S’ level, which is an exam for going on to Oxford or Cambridge. But after the fourth term, I attacked a teacher with an umbrella. It was a stupid thing to do because he was really nice. I could never understand why I did things. I was expelled in the Christmas term. I was meant to go on to Norwood Technical College to finish my ‘A’ levels.

In every neighbourhood, kids select their peers with psychic antennae and dress code clues. In ‘69 the division between hippy and straight was obvious on sight, but connecting with a clique that shared your own musical wavelength took fine tuning. With January’s icy breath at his back, Peter infiltrated the south-east London scene; it would prove to be a pivotal move in his early creative development. Peter had recently found a personal catalyst in the form of Bob Dylan. Ardently seeking further information on the American singer, Perrett caught whispers of a Dylan bootleg that was circulating locally and set out to trace the source: Eventually someone told me who the guy was that had the bootleg, his name was John Whitfield and he played piano in a school band. I saw him in the street one day, went up to him and asked him about it. Zena (Xenoulla) was with him... that was the first time I ever met her. I was 16 and she was 18.

Zena remembers their first encounter with the clarity of a life changing event: One day when John and I were walking up the hill, this young guy came along. He had long straight hair and these full lips; he just looked like a skinny Jim Morrison. He totally ignored me ‘cos I looked like a school girl, and came up to John Whitfield and asked him if he had any Bob Dylan bootlegs. That’s how I met Peter Perrett. He ended up walking back with us to John’s flat, where John played keyboards and I’d sing. Peter and I got talking ‘cos I was the first girl he’d met who was into Dylan.

Peter may have been the one responsible for pruning Xenoulla’s rolling name into a more streamlined form, but it was Zena who altered the course of their destiny. While the tight reins of family duty still bound her, over the years she had learned to manoeuvre within them. A series of twists in the Kakoulli’s lives had also allowed a little slack.

The first and most dramatic event occurred just days before Mrs Kakoulli gave birth to her last child. When a severe headache was diagnosed as a tumour, Loulla Kakoulli was rushed to hospital where she had a healthy baby girl called Koulla, before slipping into a coma. Loulla was discharged nine months later following successful surgery. A casual observer might have thought the household reverted to normal on her return. Under closer scrutiny the emotional landscape between Mr and Mrs Kakoulli had improved greatly. Realising that he had nearly lost his wife, Dimitris dropped his latest mistress, a teenage cousin, and repented of his roving ways. His temper was still hotter than August in Athens but he began to treat Loulla with affection and respect, much to the pleased astonishment of his offspring.

Life would never become a Mediterranean version of ‘The Waltons’ but the unexpected arrival of two previously unknown teenage brothers, Kallis and Dino, from their mother’s first marriage, considerably enlarged Zena’s horizons. Although Kallis went back to Cyprus once his mother was on the mend, 16 year-old Dino stayed. He was to have a profound effect on Zena : My brother moved in. He was really into music and playing bass guitar. I was very influenced by him. I bought an acoustic guitar just before I went to secondary school. The first music I’d heard was Elvis which didn’t do anything for me, but at the age of 11 I came across Dylan and that totally changed my life. That became my escape. I also liked the blues and would listen to Bessie Smith, I could relate to it. I used to sing along and play the guitar to myself. I was fanatical about it. My mother would call out, ‘Xenoulla stop that singing, have you done the house work yet?’ Then my younger brother Harry started to get into it and I taught him to play the guitar as well. Dino moved out after two years but he left behind the seeds of his music.

Even the furthest outposts of suburbia felt the seismic impact of pop and protest culture, and all of it lay just beyond Zena’s front door. Her break came when Mrs Kakoulli took a late shift in the biscuit factory. In the gap between her mother leaving and Dimitris returning from work, Zena suddenly found a couple of hour’s grace. She was introduced to an enclave of Dylan devotees by a school friend who was dating one of the local kingpins, Bob Whitfield, whose brother John was already a popular fixture on the neighbourhood group scene. Taking inspiration from The Band’s ‘Music From Big Pink’ and Dylan’s ‘John Wesley Harding’, John Whitfield and a few of his musician pals, including drummer Jon Newey, invited Zena to join their ranks.

Like Peter, Jon Newey had gone to the fourteen-hour Technicolour baptism of hippy and come away blinded by enlightenment, as he notes: Instead of studying for ‘O’-levels I was drawing psychedelic designs and reading ‘International Times’. He finished school in ‘67 with the primary aim of playing drums: I started to rehearse with John Whitfield, he played piano and harmonium. His parents had a house on the corner of Hornimans Drive in Forest Hill and they had a basement where John and I would play covers of Dylan numbers. Zena came down and was doing folk songs. She was passionate about music and had a good voice. We ended up playing a couple of songs with her. John and I backed her at a school gig which Peter came down to because by that time he’d started going out with her. Peter and I got on pretty well from the off because we both shared interests. I’d asked him what he was into and he said Dylan and The Velvet Underground.

In one swoop, the strands of Peter Perrett’s future were presented to him. As well as aligning himself with a coterie of like-minded musicians, he was also about to embark on a far-reaching relationship: Zena was the first girl I could ever talk to; up until that time most of the girls I’d been out with I didn’t have anything in common with, apart from the fact I fancied them. Zena was as fanatical about Bob Dylan as I was. Instead of going to college, we used to meet in school time. She had to be home early otherwise her parents would kill her. It was just a friendship to begin with, from January until I actually kissed her in May.

The developing romance would hasten the course of Zena and her brother Harry’s escape plot. With the looming threat of an arranged marriage and a parade of potential suitors being welcomed in by her parents, Zena was seized by panic. Her dreams of an independent future, not to mention her ambition to become a singer, were in jeopardy. The added complication of a boyfriend quickened the pace of the break out. After their first kiss, when Peter proclaimed his love, Zena alerted him to her plight: "I tried to tell Peter as best I could about