the Manzel Room in Sydney, which had a reputation for being the roughest rock-and-roll place on the planet, and we got thrown out for being too rowdy.
We pretty much met everyone we wanted to meet in Australia, and the whole thing was like a big dream. I loved cricket, so it was a big deal to meet Greg Chappell and his boys, as they were people you only normally got to see on the BBC.
LIFE was so much fun that when we got back to the Rum Runner, I remember thinking,
Well, even if we don’t make it any bigger, this has all been worth it.
We were surrounded by everything that young men aspire to have, and at times some of us tended to get a bit overindulgent. We had a little private room at the back of the club for “extra activities,” which was decked out to have a bit of fun. We had cushions and mattresses and candles in there, and it was a place where you could go to smoke a spliff or be alone with a girl. I jokily called it the “sex offender’s room” (things weren’t so politically correct then), and it ended up being used quite a lot. The Rum Runner was still very much our base; it had a policy of letting in two girls for every guy, so there was never any shortage of female company.
There was one girl in particular who was absolutely gorgeous, and she just loved sex with any man who would go with her. I won’t use her real name here, so let’s just call her Miss X instead. I was the first to discover her delights but I found out that afterward she went through quite a few of the males at the club. She was blond and beautiful, with looks that would have made any Hollywood starlet jealous, but she was quite happy to service you in the sex offender’s room or anywhere else if need be. Generally the MO of girls like Miss X was that if they went with one of us they’d attempt to go after the others, too, not just the band but those around us.
Sometimes someone would accidentally walk in on people when they were in the sex offender’s room. I can remember Al Beard running over on one occasion and spluttering, “Oh chaps! Have you heard about Roger and Giovanna? We’ve just caught them at it!”
I think most of us had an unexpected walk-in at some point, but we were just doing what young men do when they’re single and surrounded by beautiful women, and the choice of females at the Rum Runner was overwhelming and unreal. This was before the scourge of AIDS became a national issue, so things were still very hedonistic.
“That was the whole point in forming a band. Girls, absolutely gorgeous girls,” Simon once said in an interview. “We were five heterosexual, good-looking men. We competed against each other for the sexiest girls . . . and I won!”
In fact, it was John who often found himself with the most girls on his arm, sometimes with outrageous consequences. John was very popular, and he just bounced in and out of girlfriends every few weeks. After the album had come out he’d managed to find time to sneak off to Paris for a romantic couple of days with a girl named Roberta. It must have been a passionate time, because a few years later we opened up a copy of the
Daily Mirror
to see Polaroid photos they had taken of each other in bed. John was pictured drinking a cocktail naked in bed, and Roberta was reclining on the sheets dressed only in stockings, suspenders, and high heels, under the headline A HIGH TIME IN PARIS .
“When we went to the Louvre it was closed, so we spent most of our time in bed, eating strawberries, cheese and French bread,” she told the paper.
The rest of the band had a bit of a quiet smirk at the article, but to be fair to John it can’t have been very nice for him, especially as his parents would have seen it. The article was one of many invasions of privacy he suffered, and it must have been upsetting. When we played in Japan, John had more girls chasing him than anyone, and I think it started to get to him. We knew we would have female attention, but it was hugely
We pretty much met everyone we wanted to meet in Australia, and the whole thing was like a big dream. I loved cricket, so it was a big deal to meet Greg Chappell and his boys, as they were people you only normally got to see on the BBC.
LIFE was so much fun that when we got back to the Rum Runner, I remember thinking,
Well, even if we don’t make it any bigger, this has all been worth it.
We were surrounded by everything that young men aspire to have, and at times some of us tended to get a bit overindulgent. We had a little private room at the back of the club for “extra activities,” which was decked out to have a bit of fun. We had cushions and mattresses and candles in there, and it was a place where you could go to smoke a spliff or be alone with a girl. I jokily called it the “sex offender’s room” (things weren’t so politically correct then), and it ended up being used quite a lot. The Rum Runner was still very much our base; it had a policy of letting in two girls for every guy, so there was never any shortage of female company.
There was one girl in particular who was absolutely gorgeous, and she just loved sex with any man who would go with her. I won’t use her real name here, so let’s just call her Miss X instead. I was the first to discover her delights but I found out that afterward she went through quite a few of the males at the club. She was blond and beautiful, with looks that would have made any Hollywood starlet jealous, but she was quite happy to service you in the sex offender’s room or anywhere else if need be. Generally the MO of girls like Miss X was that if they went with one of us they’d attempt to go after the others, too, not just the band but those around us.
Sometimes someone would accidentally walk in on people when they were in the sex offender’s room. I can remember Al Beard running over on one occasion and spluttering, “Oh chaps! Have you heard about Roger and Giovanna? We’ve just caught them at it!”
I think most of us had an unexpected walk-in at some point, but we were just doing what young men do when they’re single and surrounded by beautiful women, and the choice of females at the Rum Runner was overwhelming and unreal. This was before the scourge of AIDS became a national issue, so things were still very hedonistic.
“That was the whole point in forming a band. Girls, absolutely gorgeous girls,” Simon once said in an interview. “We were five heterosexual, good-looking men. We competed against each other for the sexiest girls . . . and I won!”
In fact, it was John who often found himself with the most girls on his arm, sometimes with outrageous consequences. John was very popular, and he just bounced in and out of girlfriends every few weeks. After the album had come out he’d managed to find time to sneak off to Paris for a romantic couple of days with a girl named Roberta. It must have been a passionate time, because a few years later we opened up a copy of the
Daily Mirror
to see Polaroid photos they had taken of each other in bed. John was pictured drinking a cocktail naked in bed, and Roberta was reclining on the sheets dressed only in stockings, suspenders, and high heels, under the headline A HIGH TIME IN PARIS .
“When we went to the Louvre it was closed, so we spent most of our time in bed, eating strawberries, cheese and French bread,” she told the paper.
The rest of the band had a bit of a quiet smirk at the article, but to be fair to John it can’t have been very nice for him, especially as his parents would have seen it. The article was one of many invasions of privacy he suffered, and it must have been upsetting. When we played in Japan, John had more girls chasing him than anyone, and I think it started to get to him. We knew we would have female attention, but it was hugely
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