“No pressure”: Judy Garland’s double date with The Pretty Things
Standing at the centre of old Hollywood’s glamour and abuses is actress and singer Judy Garland.
A product of the old studio system, Garland had entered the film industry on the back of her successful family vaudeville act, boasting a triple threat of natural comedic timing, emotional depth, and a powerful contralto singing voice. Before long, Garland was cast in ‘girl next door’ type roles under MGM contract, starring alongside musical comedy pictures alongside Mickey Rooney before entering cinema eternality as Kansas girl Dorothy Gale in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, its ‘Over the Rainbow’ standard evolving as Garland’s defining theme for the rest of her life.
Yet, behind the fame was a sad tale of studio control and abuse. Still in her teens, a pressure to take amphetamines to keep up with the hectic shooting schedules, barbiturates to impose sleep, and a perennial top-down obsession with her diet burnished lifelong issues with substance abuse and anxieties around her appearance. Dependence on such drugs would ultimately claim her life, dying in June 1969 at 47 years old from a suspected accidental overdose of Secobarbital tablets.
Her tumultuous career and life naturally drew Garland to the fringe intersections between socialite high society and countercultural edges. Such collisions frequently crossed paths in London’s Ad Lib Club. Occupying the fourth floor above today’s Prince Charles Cinema off Leicester Square, the soul and R&B joint hosted everybody from Frank Sinatra to The Rolling Stones, and famously, the site of The Beatles’ first LSD trip in 1965.
Another of Ad Lib’s keen regulars was The Pretty Things. While less remembered in the mainstream musical memory, their run of psychedelic-flecked blues rock thrust frontman Phil Taylor to the fore of the era’s swinging underground, dropping celebrated albums admired within the scene, if not translating to chart success as many of their contemporaries. Still, in the zenith of the era’s madness, Taylor and drummer Viv Prince found themselves on a last-minute, unlikely double date they wouldn’t forget.
On Prince’s orders, he and Taylor headed to the Ad Lib, awaiting the two ‘dates’ they were to fraternise with. After a moment’s wait, in came an inebriated Garland arm in arm with Soviet-defect master ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.
“What’s weird is that Rudy was a terrible dancer,” Taylor recounted to Classic Rock in 2007. “His version of the twist was excruciating, nobody wanted to dance with him. Judy had been out drinking with Viv all day, and she was very out of it, lifting her dress over her head. It was a wild night”.
Just another night in the Ad Lib. In a time before paparazzi were hiding in a bush, ready to snap such shenanigans, a rock band could dance badly all night with a Hollywood musical star and a Russian ballet genius without batting an eyelid.
“I’ve always said I wish I could remember what happened after that,” Taylor confessed. “I remember leaving the club, but by then the drugs and the booze had taken hold, and I don’t remember much else. Everybody wanted to know who slept with whom, but I honestly can’t remember… Wish I could”.
