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| Not Drooper from the Banana Splits its John Dunbar |
John Dunbar Indica Gallery
Whilst researching the Beatles and their circle of friends
it is amazing to uncover the numerous connections between the players and how
their stories all seem to interlock. It truly is a case of circles within
circles. In the latest instalment of the Magick Circle series we investigate the
highly influential John Dunbar.
In the careers of the Beatles and the Stones certain figures
loom large. Hanging around in the background, manipulating certain events,
acting as introductory agents and, in the process, playing huge roles in the
careers of these seminal bands.
John Dunbar was one of these people. Dunbar was born in
Mexico City in 1943, the son of the British filmmaker and former cultural attache to Moscow, Robert Dunbar. In 1965
he would go on to found the Indica gallery and bookshop in London with Barry
Miles. Although the gallery only lasted for two years its influence has lasted
considerably longer.
Dunbar seems to be connected to anyone who was anyone in the
sixties. In 1965 he married Marianne Faithfull with Peter Asher as his best
man. Peter Asher is the brother of Jane Asher, Paul McCartney’s then fiancée,
and naturally, the perfect introduction to the fab four.
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| Dunbar and Faithfull on their wedding day |
Marianne Faithfull would go on to leave Dunbar for Mick
Jagger, a heroin addiction and a starring role in a Kenneth Anger movie,
Lucifer Rising. Her co-star in this movie was Donald Cammell who would go on to
produce the notorious film, Performance, starring Mick Jagger and the other
serial Stone shagger, Anita Pallenberg. Cammell’s father would have been a name
well known to Kenneth Anger, given that he had written a biography on Anger’s,
and later the Beatles and Stones hero, Aleister Crowley. As a footnote, Lucifer
Rising featured a soundtrack recorded by the ex-Manson acolyte Bobby Beausoleil,
Angers former lover.
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| Indica Gallery |
It was at the Indica bookshop that John Lennon would
discover the book, the Passover Plot by Hugh J. Schonfield, that would
enlighten the Beatle and ultimately lead to the infamous ‘bigger than Jesus’
quote and the furious furore in the American bible belt that saw Beatles
records burnt in huge numbers and death threats from the KKK. Here also, he
purchased his copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead which inspired the song
‘Tomorrow never knows’ and discovered the work of Nietzche.
Meanwhile, it was at the Indica Gallery that Yoko Ono would
display her ‘Unfinished Paintings and Objects’ exhibition and where, on the 9th
November 1966, John Dunbar would introduce her to John Lennon and, in so doing,
alter irrevocably the direction of the Beatles.
It was also at this Robert Fraser sponsored exhibition that Sharon
Tate and Roman Polanski would visit the show several times late at night,
spending hours playing with Yoko’s white chess set until they could no longer
keep all the pieces in their minds and had to abandon their game.
It was, reportedly, during that same sojourn to London, that
Tate was initiated into the practice of witchcraft by Alexander "King of
the Witches" Sanders. A man who, apparently, received 'training' as a
child from, none other than everyone’s favourite occultist, Aleister Crowley.
Tate, it will be remembered, was famously murdered by
members of Charles Manson’s ‘Family’ when eight months pregnant. She was
slaughtered alongside, amongst others, Abigail Folger, who had helped fund
movies for Kenneth Anger.
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| Miles, Dunbar, Faithfull, Asher and McCartney |
John Dunbar would also play a significant part in the life
of Paul McCartney. It was through John that Paul met the art dealer Robert
Fraser, became involved in starting Indica Bookshop and Gallery, and was
introduced to a demi-monde of writers, jazz musicians and junkies.
It was also from the Indica that Paul helped fund and launch
the underground newspaper, International Times. Paul would be listed under the
editorial staff using his pseudonym Ian Iachimoe, the name he used when writing
the song ‘paperback writer’.
The following is from a Guardian interview with Dunbar...
Playing to the gallery
It's 40 years since Indica set
London swinging. Kate Bernard catches up with its founding gallerist
John Dunbar to talk about John and Yoko, and Mick and Marianne
London,
spring 1966. In the unlikely surroundings of St James's - more
accustomed to bowler hats and bearskins than new art - a cultural
revolution is in progress. Indica, the happening experimental art
gallery that is the brainchild of 22-year-old Cambridge graduate John
Dunbar, first opened its doors last year. Tonight, it's showtime.
'Swinging London' starts here. The private view has attracted all the
right people: Dunbar's wife Marianne Faithfull, Paul McCartney and his
girlfriend Jane Asher, Eric Burdon of the Animals, photographer Gered
Mankowitz, producer Michael White, John Pearse of the King's Road
clothes shop Granny Takes a Trip, a pretty boy called Mark Feld who's
about to change his name to Marc Bolan, beat poets, art critics and the
in crowd. William Burroughs hates parties but stuck his nose in for a
few minutes before retreating to his flat round the corner. The
flamboyant art dealer Robert Fraser, in his tight pink suit, and various
Ormesby Gores and McKewens represent high society's hip vanguard. The
classes are colliding, having fun, taking lots of drugs and using the
energy from the social bustle to create art of many kinds.
Guests
spill out into the yard with their glasses of white wine. Later, Roman
Polanski and Sharon Tate will tap on the window for a gossip. And in a
matter of months, John Lennon will arrive in a chauffeur-driven Mini at
the behest of John Dunbar, who thinks his friend should see the work of a
young Japanese artist called Yoko Ono before her show opens.
'It
was a wonderful time,' declares Marianne Faithfull today from Paris, in
her rich rock'n'roll contralto. 'The opening night of Indica was
complete chaos. Everyone was trying to get the place ready - John, Barry
Miles [who ran the bookshop side of Indica], Paul McCartney, Jane
Asher, our friend David Courts, so many people ... but nobody had
thought to clean the lavatory, which was, of course, filthy. I remember I
was wearing a beautiful dress and very pale tights, and there I was, on
my hands and knees, scrubbing the loo. Because of John, I was very much
a part of it all, and I'm so proud that I was.'
In pop-cultural
terms, Indica (its name, wouldn't you know, taken from Cannabis indica),
which opened and closed within just two years, is up there with the Sex
Pistols's gig at the 100 Club or the opening of Damien Hirst's Freeze.
You only had to be there to feel artistic, forward-thinking and cool.
John Dunbar's exhibition list is pored over by modern art anoraks - he
pushed the boundaries of art in Britain, preparing the ground for the
YBA explosion in the early Nineties and the diversity of work made and
shown here today. Miles's bookshop was the hub of the underground scene.
(He later ran Zapple, the spoken word division of the Apple label, and
became a music journalist and biographer.)
Now, 40 years later,
Indica has inspired Riflemaker, a gallery that showcases the work of
young artists in a former gunsmith's shop in Soho, to go back to the
future. On 20 November, Riflemaker 'becomes' Indica, and shows work by
Yoko Ono, the sculptor Takis, 'kinetic poet' Liliane Lijn, Mark Boyle
and Joan Hills (of the Boyle Family), etc, who all exhibited at Indica.
Over the three months it's on - it is an exhibition of museum-like
proportions - there will also be gigs, talks, screenings and new art to
see. Tot Taylor of Riflemaker hopes that the show 'will make people
reconsider the aspirational, product-based art of today. Dunbar never
compromised in his choices of what he exhibited. It's very unusual to
find someone with that integrity.' With that in mind, Riflemaker has
asked young artists such as Conrad Shawcross and Jaime Gili to make work
for the show as though they had been commissioned for Indica by John
Dunbar himself.
Dunbar's not famous these days and he's certainly
not rich. His eye for art and the ability to connect and direct
creative people were never converted into cash. Instead he greets you
with the broad grin of a man who's never had a desk job or its attendant
anxieties. His hippy-cockney delivery makes children 'saucepans', the
paparazzi 'flish flish' and most things 'no problemo'. He's dapper (if
stuck in a sartorial time warp) in jeans, collarless shirt, waistcoat
and granny glasses, and is still very much on society's inside track.
Going out usually means a private view, posh party, Soho's Groucho Club -
'Groupies' as he calls it - or the Colony Room next door, which has
always been art central. He always sees Marianne Faithfull when she's
over from Paris, and during Frieze week he was spotted at a party with
Anita Pallenberg, given by their young friend Dan Macmillan. David
Courts - an artist who made the fantastic skull jewellery for Keith
Richards, and who met Dunbar in Greece in 1964 - points out John's
ability to make friends. 'He immediately finds out what you're
interested in and because he's so well informed he's bound to know
something about it.' Tot Taylor says throughout his Indica research that
he hasn't met anyone who dislikes Dunbar. He's a social relaxant.
The
sketchbooks in which he records the evening's events are his nocturnal
rogue's gallery, and allow him to observe from the sidelines of
Groucho's or the Colony Room. 'I used to carry bits of paper on me in
case anyone needed something to draw on - so I have a couple of sketches
by [the British pop artist] Colin Self and John [Lennon].' Entire
shelves in his overstuffed magpie's nest of a flat are dedicated to
these journals - full of faces from the past 40 years. These days he
includes photographs. 'I have a few nice shots of Damien [Hirst] and
Kate [Moss]. I don't go around trying to capture famous people, but they
sometimes happen to be around.'
Today he seems vaguely amused by
the sudden buzz around him, while trying to remain low-definition.
'Being a minor celebrity myself for a while put me off all that
forever,' he says. 'Journalists knocking on the door ... Anita and Keith
and Marianne getting busted.' Keith Richards's country house, Redlands,
was the scene of the infamous drugs bust that put Robert Fraser and
Mick Jagger into custody and allegedly found Faithfull wrapped in
nothing more than a fur rug. 'It was absurd. But press attention in
those days was nothing compared to now. Kate Moss can't meet someone for
a drink without being chased by motorbikes or having to change plans at
the last minute.' He should know. Kate and John have been friends since
they met through Keith Richards at a wedding 10 years ago. He attended
her infamous 30th birthday party.
John Dunbar was born in Mexico
City in 1943, but his first memory is of Moscow, where his father, a
Scot, was the British Embassy's cultural attache. By the time he was
four, the family had moved to England. He was sent to Bryanston. 'But at
17 I was chucked out for getting pissed. I did my entrance exams for
Cambridge from Harrow tech, started going to Hampstead parties and met
lots of cool people.'
Dunbar's parents moved to Mayfair. Peter
Asher (of the pop group Peter & Gordon) lived with his family in
nearby Wimpole Street and the two became friends. 'Then Peter's sister
Jane started going out with Paul McCartney and we got to know him.' At
Cambridge he met the artist Rory McEwen. 'He introduced me to his family
and all their cousins and Lord Thingummybob ... oh, you know, that
whole posh crowd.' At one Chelsea party, Princess Margaret informed
Dunbar he had a hole in his jeans, putting her finger through it as she
did so. He rolls his eyes at the memory.
Poets, painters, half of
Chelsea and a few dodgy geezers soon made up the Dickensian sweep of
Dunbar's world. And then there was Marianne Faithfull. Dunbar met
Faithfull, who at 17 was still at school, in his last year at Cambridge,
where he studied natural sciences and fine art. She describes the
moment as 'meeting my catalyst, my Virgil. A world opened up when I met
John.' He was the artistic intellectual who would show her the world.
She was his beautiful and eager muse.
Dunbar has always been a
facilitator - great when it comes to advising people on their careers.
In 1964, the Rolling Stones's manager Andrew Loog Oldham announced he
was 'looking for a girl who could sing'. Dunbar introduced him to
Faithfull - 'You can sing a bit, can't you Marianne?' he said. But just
before 'As Tears Go By' came out, the couple had a row and Dunbar went
to Greece for the summer. When he returned, Faithfull was famous. 'Fame
wasn't what either of us wanted,' she says now.
They married in
May 1965 when he was 21 and she was 18, spending their honeymoon in
Paris with Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. 'That really was amazing,'
says Faithfull. 'Ginsberg and Corso were famous - not us!' Before the
wedding, when Faithfull was already pregnant, she met Bob Dylan, who
developed a huge crush and tried to put her off marrying Dunbar. 'You
can't marry someone who wears glasses. He's the eternal student,' crowed
Dylan. 'He was quite wrong,' says Faithfull today. 'John's the eternal
teacher.'
With her newfound pop wealth, Faithfull had rented a
flat in Lennox Gardens. With John Mayall, Donovan, Paul McCartney,
Robert Fraser and Christopher Gibbs as regulars it became something of a
salon. Dunbar and his friends embraced acid culture. 'It first came, in
about 1965, as drops on sugar cubes.' Dunbar's first trip was at Lennox
Gardens in the company of David Courts. Marianne was pregnant with
their son Nicholas. 'I'm resting in the bed, and suddenly there's John,
gleaming-eyed, and he wants the pillows.' Afraid of 'bringing him down',
she gave him bits of bedding as he asked for them, and eventually the
mattress. When her mother found her lying on the bed springs, she lamely
explained that Dunbar was doing an experiment.
'Marianne was
sometimes our "designated driver" in the early days - acid was a bit
doolally for her back then,' says Dunbar. Faithfull says that Dunbar
wouldn't let her take drugs at the time. 'I was dying to have a go,' she
laughs today. 'I was only trying to keep her out of trouble,' he
retorts. While Dunbar was writing art reviews for the Scotsman, he and
Miles attended the Albert Hall Poetry Festival. 'Quite a lot of the
poetry was shit, but 7,000 people had turned up for it,' he says. 'There
was obviously a thirst for alternative entertainment. The art scene at
the time consisted of West End galleries where the public weren't
encouraged to linger. It was pretty dull. We decided on a shop. Miles
would do the books and I'd do the gallery.'
Dunbar found the
premises, Peter Asher put up the £2,100 it took to get started, lending
Dunbar and Miles £700 each so all three had equal shares. 'Then I took
lots of speed, painted the whole place white and put the shelves up ...'
Paul McCartney, Indica's first customer, merrily mucked in. Dunbar had
to smear Windolene over the glass because workmen kept peering in,
hoping to glimpse a Beatle doing manual labour. Jane Asher donated an
old-fashioned till she had once used as a toy. McCartney designed
Indica's wrapping paper. Dunbar and McCartney haven't met recently but
McCartney obviously remembers him fondly; when approached by Miles,he
put a few quid towards the John Pearse suit that was Dunbar's 50th
birthday present from his friends. He is expected to take part in the
Indica celebrations.
In the summer of 1966, Indica put on a group
show - mainly South American artists living in Paris, including Julio
Le Parc. Dunbar drove a Mini across Europe to the Venice Biennale, where
he got to know Robert Fraser, who had left London wearing a white suit
and carrying a large briefcase filled with drugs. 'We had cocktails at
Peggy Guggenheim's palazzo - and a great time,' says Dunbar. On the way
home he heard that Julio had won the Grand Prize for painting.
Miles
picks up the story. 'A few days later a large man burst through the
door of Indica, saying, "I'm a big American collector! Let me see your
Le Parcs!" Dunbar polished his glasses and said, "I'm a little English
art dealer and the Le Parcs are all downstairs."'
The Observer
Magazine of May 1967 stated: 'Indica organises some of the most
avant-garde shows to be seen in London - anything from kinetic art,
where sculptures move or rattle, to "happenings" and "events" by a
Japanese artist called Yoko Ono.' Dunbar, who had been hanging out with
John Lennon, suggested he drop in to see Yoko's show before it opened.
'They didn't get off together then - he was still with Cynthia and she
was married to Tony Cox - but he'd never met anyone like her, that's for
sure. She's a very powerful lady.'
When Dunbar introduced Lennon
to Yoko, she handed him a card which read 'Breathe'. He panted like a
dog. 'Indica gave me a space where I could be free and express my
ideas,' says Yoko Ono today. 'It was a comfort zone in an otherwise cold
and snobby art world that didn't get me yet.' Part of the Beatles tour
in London today is to visit Indica's original home in Mason's Yard,
where John met Yoko. John Lennon remembered the moment in an interview:
'There was an apple on sale there for £200, I thought it was fantastic -
I got the humour in her work immediately.'
Nicholas Dunbar was
born in November 1965, 10 days before Indica opened for business. 'We
were just kids, you know,' says John Dunbar. Marianne agrees. 'I
wouldn't recommend being married and having a baby at 18, but I wouldn't
have missed it for anything.'
By early 1967, with the pressures
of Marianne touring, arguments over money and too many drugs, the
Dunbars felt trapped in their marriage, a tangled web in which they both
felt trapped. 'We drifted apart, until I couldn't bear being around and
had to leave,' John says. 'John was perfect for me and if the Sixties
hadn't blown up so much dust we would have stayed together,' says
Marianne. 'But we were so young. And I think for both of us there was
the allure of another life ... then this glamorous, dangerous figure
called Mick Jagger turned up and swept me off my feet.'
After the
split, Dunbar took a flat opposite his parents, where McCartney and
Lennon would descend - often adding to the psychedelic mural Dunbar had
started. Brian Jones hung out there. 'He was a good friend and used to
stay a lot,' says Dunbar. 'One night he turned up with Toni Basil, a
dancer who would become a pop star herself.' She ended up living with
him for six months. 'The idea for Apple started at that flat,' says
Dunbar. 'It was just John, Paul and me chatting,' he says. He remembers
it being 'a very acidy afternoon'. Dunbar and Lennon had lots of similar
times together, in the psychedelic Roller or hanging out at Lennon's
country pile in Weybridge. The pair turned up at the 14-hour
Technicolour Dream - a major happening at Alexandra Palace - and then
forgot all about it, until they saw a clip on the news.
Back at
Indica, Dunbar was only interested in making enough money to put on the
next show, and as Miles admits, 'John and I were completely useless at
the business side of things.' The bookshop moved to Southampton Row in
1966, and the gallery folded in November 1967. For a while Dunbar worked
as exhibitions officer for the British Council, introducing them to
happening artists Barry Flanagan, Colin Self, Bruce McLean and Clive
Barker. 'So I drove a desk, briefly,' he laughs.
When Faithfull
split with Mick Jagger and became a heroin addict, Nicholas was sent to
live with her mother Eva in Berkshire. 'When he was six, Eva tried to
top herself and I took care of him,' recalls Dunbar. One Friday, Eva
'kidnapped' Nicholas from school. Dunbar tried to kidnap him back but
failed. By the next Monday the case was being heard in court. 'Marianne
was out to lunch at this point and lots of mud was slung about in court
... it was awful.' It was decided that Dunbar's parents should have
custody of their grandson and, gradually, over the next few years,
Nicholas moved back in with his father. These days Nicholas has two
sons of his own and is editing a magazine. 'He's a very talented artist
and musician,' says Dunbar, 'but having had two children he found
himself needing to earn proper money.' John, Nicholas and Marianne have a
good relationship. As Marianne says, 'However difficult it's been for
us as a family, it's all OK now.' Dunbar had another son,
23-year-old William, with Jill Matthews. William is now editing an
English-language newspaper in Georgia.
Dunbar has just finished
the roof of his pet project for the last few years, a studio in Scotland
- a living sculpture, indeed - that he's been building from scrap. 'All
thanks to a very old friend who has a bit of land up there. It has been
pretty hard work,' he says. With that in mind I tell him that Tot had
originally hoped he would 'run' Riflemaker on a daily basis for the
duration of the Indica show. 'Hmm, no, that's not going to happen - but
of course I'll kind of hang out there a bit.' Same as it ever was.
UPDATE: For more information please read my book The Sgt Pepper Code
