Sunday 27 September

Beautiful day here in London. A real Indian summer day in fact and I took myself off to to Westfield the huge shopping mall in Shepherd's Bush which is very impressive. During the time I have spent on the road with The Rolling Stones I have seen the inside of many shopping malls because quite often that's all there is if you are staying in Buckhead County just outside of Atlanta for instance or in Milwaukee where the have The Mall Of America which is the largest in the world and rather overwhelming in it's layout. I was really surprised by this one as it was so easy to get around and was airy spacious and bright. It has great stores of all descriptions and in the clothes it ranges from High St to Designer which are in a part known as The Village. I wandered around quite happily and bought a couple of things. One item of clothing and a couple of cushion covers for my home. I normally find malls to be soulless and depressing but this was anything but.

Last time I wrote about my early work years and one thing I remember was that when I first started I could not wait to spend my money on clothes for myself. Right behind Decca House was The Lambeth Walk where you could get all kinds of mod things as that was the style at the time. My hair was somewhat of a rocker type style and then I found a hairdresser in Soho who gave the mod haircut which was known as the college boy. It was on Frith St and I took the bus one lunch hour to get it done and remember the sight of prostitutes standing on the street corners in fur coats with their winter breath as it was very cold. I was so absorbed to see this as I had only read about it in books and I was already quite curious sexually. I had in fact read a lot of Tennessee Williams plays in the local library and empathised with their underlying sexual message so I was already some fascinated by this world and it dovetailed nicely with my love of rock'n'roll as both of these things were somewhat outlaw expressions at the time. In fact one of the first live artists I ever saw was Jerry Lee Lewis at the Kilburn Granada who the day after had to quit Britain as he was exposed in the News Of The World as marrying his 14 year old cousin which was pure Tennessee who many years later when I was living in New York I saw arm in arm with Andy Warhol and Truman Capote strolling past St Patrick's Cathedral after a very jolly lunch. They all looked like they were having a high old time and it was a moment. There have been a lot of those!