Memories of the swinging sixties

Procol Harum first performed Whiter Shade of Pale at his place near Oxford Circus, where his regulars included Jimi Hendrix, with whom he later went on tour in the United States.

Flynn can also claim to be the man who discovered arguably the greatest of the seventies progressive supergroups Yes, becoming their manager and getting them signed to Atlantic Records. And it was to be the bitter two-year legal battle that followed his split with Yes that ultimately persuaded him to say ‘no’ to the music industry to become an award-winning landlord.

Yet the man who stood for years behind the bar of The Bull in Charlbury, listening to regulars exchanging stories, somehow refrained from letting on that he once had an LSD trip at the home of Bob Dylan’s manager and turned down the chance to manage Genesis (though not on the same night).

He only once succumbed to a little personal vanity, when he pinned up a picture of the suit that he once delivered to Jimi Hendrix in New York, which the guitarist subsequently gave him. It was in response to an item he’d seen in a newspaper about one of Hendrix’s suits being sold for a small fortune in an auction house. Not that many customers even noticed it.

But Flynn recently had his own day in the auction room, when he put most of his rock and pop memorabilia up for sale at Bonhams in Knightsbridge. Items that he offered for sale included a filing cabinet of membership cards from the legendary Speakeasy Club, created by ‘mein host’ Flynn and his future wife Suzanne Bassett, at 48 Margaret Street. Launched at the height of the swinging sixties it was a place where the Rolling Stones could rub shoulders with the likes of Peter Cook. The typewritten members’ details, some, like Pete Townshend’s, hand-signed, read like a sixties who’s who: Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Brian Jones, Roger Daltrey, Manfred Mann, Dudley Moore, David Bailey, Chrissie Shrimpton Kenny Everett, Albert Finney, Richard Harris — the list just goes on and on.

And Flynn counted many of them as friends, including the madcap Who drummer Keith Moon, who he was obliged to ban on three separate occasions.

“The first time I banned Keith Moon it was for spraying the bar with mace at 1am. It was a crowd control gas. It was just awful and emptied the club. Then once I looked through the glass window and Moon was on the dance floor with some girl totally naked.”

And the third time?

“I just can’t remember. But he always begged me to let him back in and I always relented.”

Hendrix particularly enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and would regularly sit in and join the house band at the end of the evening. The light blue two-piece suit with black maroon lining and a Nehru collar that Mr Flynn personally delivered to Hendrix was one of the highlights of the Bonhams auction, with a £2,000 reserve price.

Looking through the catalogue with his wife Suzanne Bassett, a former model, at their home in Thames Street, just around the corner from The Bull, which they sold six years ago, it seems that every item stirs a solid gold story.

So how did he finish up with Jimi’s suit?

“Well, in 1968, Jimi’s manager Mike Jeffrey approached me with the idea of opening a club in New York and invited to fly me over. Before leaving he asked me to pick up the suit from Granny Takes a Trip and bring it to the States for Jimi. After seeing the potential club premises I joined the Experience on tour. But before returning to New York, Jimi decided to give me the suit as a gift.”

Flynn is soon wading through a great pile of contracts from his days as manager of Yes, charting the band’s progress from night clubs in Cirencester to some of the world’s best known venues. He chuckles as he produces the evidence to that shows Yes were paid just £25 for playing at the Royal Albert Hall as the support act at the Cream farewell concert.

“That’s Robert Stigwood for you,” he roars.

Perhaps the hardest item to part with was a Dunhill 70 gold lighter presented to him as a Christmas present by the band with a message written by Yes singer Jon Anderson, in his own hand. It reads: “To Roy Flynn. Who has done more for us than any other men put together in the pop music business. Looking forward to a long and happy association.”

Happiness was something that his time as a band manager failed to deliver. Seriously disenchanted with the rock business in the seventies, he and Suzanne left London and bought a farmhouse in Wiltshire which they spent two years rebuilding before buying the Horse & Groom pub at Charlton, near Malmesbury, which they ran until 1984.

They sold it to buy Pinks, a restaurant at nearby Fairford, before taking over The Bell in Standlake in 1990.

“You know the biggest mistake of my life was turning down Genesis when Peter Gabriel asked me to manage them. But that was until I took on a pub tenancy,” he says.

But the couple, who once quenched the legendary thirsts of rock stars, ultimately found their own perfect pub in 1995 when they bought the historic 16th-century pub The Bull in Charlbury, which they lovingly restored to its former glory.

The following year he was back in the national limelight when he and Suzanne were voted host and hostess of the year by the prestigious Egon Ronay Guide.

Looking for a newspaper cutting showing them proudly holding up the award, he instead finds a plaque commemorating the achievement of his old group in performing at Madison Square Garden a record 16 times.

It turns out he had never harboured any secret ambitions to become a Peter Grant or Andrew Oldham (the managers of Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones, who he knew). He simply fell in love with the band, who came to his rescue one Sunday night. “I had to move to another club after there was a fire at the Speakeasy, “ he recalled.

“It was called Blaises. Apt don’t you think?”

“One Sunday Sly & the Family Stone were due to play at 11.30pm. It was a sell-out. But at 11pm someone rang to say, ‘Sly’s not coming. He’s out of it’.” In desperation he turned to his friend, Tony Stratton Smith, who told him he knew a band, totally unknown, but crucially they lived just around the corner.”

The young member of Yes rushed around to the club on September 16, 1968, with the likes of Eric Clapton and Keith Emerson in the audience. At the end of their set Mr Flynn offered to become their manager.

“In a blinding flash their music got through to me,” he told Chris Welch, the biographer of Yes, years later. “It’s very odd. By nature I’m very cautious and I had never, ever, thought of managing a band in my life. And yet I was the very next day buying them a Hammond organ, a red van and a new drum kit. I even found them a place to live. I sunk every penny I had into the band. Without me they would have broken up.

“But their music was so exciting. I’d never heard anything like it and I wanted to help them. Because of my running the Speakeasy I had got to know every agent, every manager, absolutely everybody in the music business. So I was in a key position to help this young band.”

Signing up the band to the coolest of labels, Atlantic, even ahead of Led Zeppelin, initially seemed a triumph. But having delivered to the American label “the hottest band in town” he and the band quickly became disillusioned about the lack of promotion. The first two albums sold poorly and the band’s relationship with the man who discovered them was soon at breaking point.

The “divorce” with Yes came at a Devon farmhouse, where the band were staying in 1970.

Their manager had travelled down to tell them that he could not subsidise their stay in the country indefinitely.

Today he puts it down to the ego of superstars-in-the-making.

“You need a lot of ego to perform on the stage. But artists often don’t understand that they need someone to promote their careers. They think it is simply inevitable that their natural talent will be recognised.”

The break-up of the Beatles had shown how ugly things become when the spoils of a rock band are settled by lawyers. He relinquished his management role, negotiating a deal with the management company, Hemdale, that allowed him to retain five per cent of the band’s earnings in recognition of his efforts on their behalf. Yes were not happy, even recording a track called Five Per Cent For Nothing for their Fragile album.

A two-year court battle followed with Hemdale, with Flynn claiming he was not being paid. With his legal bills mounting, he reportedly settled out of court for $150,000.

“To be honest, after two years I was just emotionally drained. It’s part of my life I’d rather forget.”

It was enough to persuade him to walk away from the music industry forever. At least he was not in the Speakeasy to witness Sid Vicious beat up the Old Grey Whistle Test’s Bob Harris in an infamous incident.

By then a pub in Oxfordshire was looking an altogether more welcoming place than ‘The Speak’.