WARD OF COURT

ADAPTED FROM ‘BLACK. VINYL WHITE POWDER’, PUBLISHED BY UNBOUND BOOKS.

Before Malcom McLaren and the Sex Pistols, there’d been two previous rock managers dedicated to the philosophy of disruption: Andrew Oldham, who transformed the Stones from a pub group to stadium superstars; and Kit Lambert, who took the Who from instrument smashing to performing a rock opera at the New York Met. But once their groups had made it to the top financially, both managers found themselves pushed aside. Neither were the industry emperors they’d once been.

By 1978 Kit had been removed from running the day-to-day business of The Who, but remembering their beginnings and the way he’d promoted them through outrageous scams, he considered himself the forefather of punk. When it emerged as a musical force, Kit felt jealous of those who were in the middle of things. He lived in a palace in Venice and had bought himself the title, Il Conte Lamberti. But he’d have swapped it all in an instant to be back at the top in the music industry. He was struggling.

One day he called me out of the blue. “I need your help. I’m in Mexico. You’ll have to come at once.”

I told him: “I’m sorry Kit, I’ve got a leaking bank account, a nagging accountant, and a group to manage.”

He was quiet for a second, then said something quite out of character, "Please!"

When I arrived in Mexico he was bubbling with high spirits. "We're going to have a great weekend. It's all arranged."

It wasn’t what I expected from someone who’d asked me to fly six thousand miles because he needed help.

Outside, the air was steaming hot but Kit had an air-conditioned limousine waiting. Two minutes later, we were sitting in cool silence, watching a soundless travelogue pass by outside the car window. Then Kit's extraordinary laugh started. It was like a racing car revving up, with little throaty bursts that slowly built to a full-throttled roar, and it was highly infectious. In a few seconds we were both in helpless fits. I think it was just the pleasure of seeing each other again.

When we finally calmed down, I said, "Kit - on the phone you said you wanted help."

His body tensed as if I'd insulted him. "I most certainly did not," he said defiantly. "I merely asked if you'd care to join me for a relaxing weekend." 

I said, "Don't be such a prick. You're lucky to have friends who'll come rushing across the world when you need them. Tell me what the problem is."

He drew himself up haughtily. "Now look here, I invited you for the weekend. I met you in a limousine, arranged your hotel and planned to buy you dinner. I don't wish to be insulted. You can get out now if you want."

He tapped on the chauffeur's partition. "Stop at once!  Mister Napier-Bell wishes to get out."

For a moment I was angry enough to go. But I couldn't forget how we'd been laughing a few seconds earlier, so I pulled myself together. "Kit, I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood."

"Yes!" he said arrogantly. "You must have done!" And for five minutes there was an awful silence.

Then he perked up again. "Look”, he said, “all I wanted was some good company. Are you up for it.”

Kit was always like this - shifting from one extreme of mood to another, expecting everyone else to crank their emotions up and down in time with his.

I tried to smile. "OK.  Let's enjoy ourselves."

"Marvellous!" he said. " We're starting with dinner at Fouquet and I've ordered the wine already."

Over dinner he told me, “I’m in an awful fucking mess. My friends want me to declare myself insane.”

I was shocked. Kit was a model of sanity. He sometimes acted a trifle crazy but that was because he was bored. Or lonely. Or because life was too dull. Or maybe just too long.

“It’s the money,” he explained. “It’s been flowing out like the spring tide. On drugs and boys and lovers. On my palace in Venice, on chauffeurs and limos. On Chateau Lafitte and jars of Beluga. My friends say I’m incapable of running my own affairs. They say I should make myself a ward of the court, and to be honest, I’ve decided they’re right.”

"But it seems awfully extreme to declare yourself insane."

"It's not really insane," Kit assured me. "It's sort of..." His eyes sparkled mischievously as he searched for the right words, "...terminally irresponsible."

Finding them activated the revving-up mechanism at the bottom of his throat and in a few seconds we were back laughing uncontrollably, until he stopped dead, lifted the edge of the tablecloth and stuck his head underneath it.

I thought, “Maybe his friends are right, maybe he IS mad.”

But then he burst out from behind the tablecloth, laughing uproariously with white dust round his nostrils. “Let’s forget coffee. It’s too boring. Waiter! Check please!”

He whirled us out of the restaurant and into the limo. We shot across town to a bar where a drag queen was introducing a show. “The big cock contest. El Pollo Grande!” Kit went to the toilet and came bubbling back with more powder round his nose. Then he whisked me off to another club, then another.

By the fourth one he’d gone out of control. We were thrown out by two bouncers and Kit fell in a heap on the sidewalk. The limo driver slung him in the back of the car and took him back to the hotel. The next time I saw him he was a ward of court.

From having lived the life of a rock emperor, Kit was reduced to begging in a government office. Well-meaning civil-servants had sold everything he owned – his palace in Venice, the furniture, the paintings, all at knock-down prices – and they were now paying for him to stay in a seedy hotel in South Kensington. Every Monday he went on the underground to a government office in Holborn where he collected £200 of his own money, which instantly went on drugs.

But there was a part of him that enjoyed it. It was nihilistic. It was punk. It was literary - a classic ending to a great tale - like Wilde’s decline in Paris or von Aschenbach’s in Venice. Kit’s life had been a sparkling story of decadence and excess.

Maybe this was the perfect last chapter.

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