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With Serges connections with the Greek, Chandris Line, I managed to line up "a work your passage over deal " on the Patris from Sydney to London, so we would be finally on our way. Lord only knows what we were going to do for money. Then Serge drops the bomb that his wife will not let him go. Desperate as we were, the idea of the three of us sailing off to London, broke, did not look like a good start.
Out of the blue, Ruth, a friend of mine, tells me that she has been offered a job in Vietnam as a go-go girl and asked if I thought she should go. Immediately, I contacted Shirley Simmons, the agent who had offered her the job and put in our two bob’s worth.
Bobby was all systems go and when I asked Rick about it he said, "I don't give a f..... where we go, as long as we go." He said he was sick and tired of the guys at the musicians club saying, “Here comes this bloke who is always going somewhere but is still here”.
I cancelled the Patrice and four days later we drove to the airport in Ricks A40, left it in the car park for dead, and were off to Manila to stay at the Phillipinas Hotel, sunning ourselves by the pool, eating club sandwiches, drinking Tom Collins and waiting for our visas to be finalised for Vietnam.
I'm not too sure of the details, but Rick passed out somewhere along the line and was admitted to hospital under observation. He was in for about 24 hrs and when he returned to the hotel, I remember him saying that the hospital was a real religious joint and that a bunch of nurses and staff had stood around his hospital bed and sung prayers to help him get better. We never really followed it up but I think they could not find anything wrong with him and he was released.
In retrospect, it could have been connected to an incident that happened to Rick while he was working with the Terry King Show band. They were at the Bronte Charles, which has a large steal beam running lengthways across the stage. Anyone who has worked that stage knows how dangerous that beam is. Rick said that he had done an almighty leap into the air, hitting his head on the beam and knocked himself out cold.
Lord only knows how we made it through Manila unscathed but we did. It took a week to arrange our visas and we were off to Vietnam.
Arriving in the Grand Hotel in Danang we found our way to Shirley Simmons’s room. When we walked in there was Shirley, Barbara Cohen, and maybe one or two other hangers on. "Hello" was hardly out of our mouths and Barbara, whom we had never met, said, " Is there only three of you?" I looked at Bob, Bob looked at Rick and pointed to myself the others and myself and replied "Yeah". Barbara said, "Three is not enough. So I said "OK, we'll go". Three of us started to walk out and Shirley jumped up saying "No, no!!!! It'll be OK. Don’t take any notice of what she says." So, from that time on, I didn’t take any notice of Barbara.
Rick was undoubtedly one of the best natural musicians I have ever had the privilege of working with. Could not read a dot and I don’t think he even read chord charts, but could he play and sing. He was rarely without his guitar in his hand and played continually, day and night. Anything he heard, he could play. If you asked him to play a major seventh or a raised ninth, he would have no idea of what you were talking about but if you played those chords to him he would play them on his guitar, right inversion and spot on the first time.
His singing was another thing. Even though he was English, he had very Negroid features with a broad nose, thick scull and thick Afro blond hair. I believe the shape of his face (similar to Negroes) gave him the resonance through his head face and jaw to give him that very black sound. He sounded blacker than black.
He was an unusual bloke in many ways. He only owned the cloths that he stood up in except that he had three socks. He would wash one sock at a time and rotate them. He had a suitcase, with nothing much in it but a rather large piece of broken mirror. When I would say to him, “Come on let’s go.” He would put his guitar in its case, put his piece of mirror and sock in the suitcase, and he was ready to go.
Rick didn’t drink much, but he would smoke all the dope you had. He would just continually roll joints and smoke them until it was all gone, and then go to sleep. Bob and I tried to play it smart and we would hide a bunch of our stash, and when we had smoked what we had showing wait for Rick to go to sleep and then produce the remainder so we could have a night-cap. Would you believe, as soon as we lit up another joint, Rick would wake up and join in again until it was all gone. You had to learn to be cagey with Rick about if you wanted to hang onto some of your stash.
Our time together in Vietnam was great musically, although I really think the agency we worked for and the girls in the show didn’t understand what we were up to. I’m sure a lot of the G.I.’s did. We travelled a lot, did some great shows and made some good music.
Rick had some very strange behaviour patterns, as I have already stated. One time after a show when we came back into the dressing room, he threw his guitar into the corner and swore profusely. When I asked him what was up he showed me his left hand and his fingertips were torn to shreads. They were bleeding and in tatters. I still to this day do not know why. Here was a man that played guitar constantly and his fingertips of his left hand would have been hardened and calloused. Why at this show had they been torn to pieces?
Rick was very puzzled by the prejuduce displayed by the Americans. Rick did not only sound black, but he produced great country and western songs as well. Things like ”Green Green Grass Of Home” he made sound his own. We discussed it often and he repeated many times.
“Why is it that when I sing one song, half of the audience loves it and cheers and claps, and the other half dislike me for it? Then when I sing another type of song, it’s reversed and this other half of the audience think it’s great and the first half dislike the performance? Rick was of English descent and raised in Australia where we have the privilege of being influenced and loving all types of music. The American north and south thing really puzzled and confused him. “It’s all music,” he would say.
Rick parted company with Bob and I when he went to “The Pussycat A Go Go Show” and we joined “Barbara Virgil”.
A French/Canadian family ran Pussycat A Go Go with the band consisting of the eldest son on keyboard, Rick on guitar and the youngest son on drums. The young bloke was about 12yo and Bob had given him three or four lessons when his Mum and Dad bought him a drum kit. Naturally, his timing at that point was atrocious and I know that every show was a battle for Rick. Timing was a thing that was natural to him and to have to perform with someone that had very limited ability, at that point in time was a hard call, especially for someone with Rick’s talent.
To make things tougher for Rick, at this time he fell in love with a young handicapped Vietnamese girl who lived in the same compound as us in Danang. He became infatuated with this girl and I think she was very flattered. It really hurt Rick when he came back to Danang after being on the road and being away for three or four weeks and to have her shun him. I don’t think she believed that an Australian would be interested in her and she just laughed and turned the other cheek.
Bob and I felt Rick was in trouble and needed friends when three Negroes beat him up after a show. They had argued about music.
We were heading out of town to go on the road and Bob and I went to his place to see him and found him unconscious. He had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and we called an ambulance. If we had not called past his place, that would have been
it, then and there. We were unable to talk to him as he was unconscious but we did see him off in the military ambulance after the assurance from the ambulance blokes that he would be all right. We had found him in time!
It was only a week or so after that that we received the news that Rick had jumped from the roof of the Peace Hotel in Quin Nhon and killed himself. With the shock, Bob cried and I was stunned! I felt I had let Rick down and should have been with him to help.
Later I spoke to Tommy Reviere, the elder son of the family that was the basis for the show Rick was with at the time. Tommy was from a show business family and I knew him fairly well after meeting him earlier in Vietnam. He was devastated and found it difficult to tell me what happened.
He was looking for Rick and went to the roof of the Peace Hotel and found him there, obviously quite distressed and agitated. When Tommy approached him and tried to talk to him, Rick threatened that if he came any closer he would jump. Even under the circumstances, Tommy did not even consider that he would carry out his threat, and so he approached Rick. Rick jumped!
What a loss to mankind. Rick had a lot to offer and it never came to fruition…
I will never understand why it happened and I feel heaps of remorse that I didn’t prevent it. In retrospect, I could have and should have…
Rick is now buried in Saigon. He travelled on an English passport but the English didn’t want anything to do with Vietnam so their government would not help. The Australian Government would not lift a finger as he travelled on an English passport. His Mum and Dad could not afford to have his body repatriated to Australia, so he was buried in Vietnamese soil.
In later correspondence with his mother, she said that Rick loved Vietnam as he had expressed in letters to her, so for him to be buried in Saigon was not such a bad thing after all.
I think about Rick constantly and cannot help wonder what might have been…
I have tried and tried to have Rick’s death recognised by officialdom, all to no avail.
