Royston Ellis
From Philosopedia.org
- Royston (photo by Gemunu Amarasinghe)
Ellis, Royston (10 Feb 1941 - )
A British-born poet, novelist, and travel author, Ellis was born in Pinner, England. He dropped out of school in 1957, bummed around Soho and the jazz club scene, all the time writing poetry; had his first volume of poems about the new generation of freeloving, rock ‘n’ rolling teenagers published in 1959; made his poetry popular by terming it “rocketry”; and performed his poems to rock music on TV and stage shows around England, appearing with rock groups such as Cliff Richard and the Shadows, then read his poetry backed in 1960 by The Beatles before they became famous.
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Meeting the Beatles
- Royston Ellis, center, backed by the Beatles Ellis and John Lennon [[1]], both interested in the American Beat poets, bonded and spent time together at 3 Gambier Terrace with Stuart Sutcliffe and others. Lennon said of Ellis that he was "the converging point of rock'n'roll and literature," and Ellis said of Lennon, "I was quite a star for them at that time because I had come up from London and that was a world they didn't really know about."
His main musician, with whom he appeared at London’s Mermaid Theatre to great acclaim in July 1961, was the then seventeen-year old Jimmy Page. Ellis gave readings in Moscow at the invitation of Yevgeni Yevtushenko.
Steve Turner, in Cliff Richard, The Biography (1993), describes how as a sixteen-year-old Ellis left school and toured with the Beatles—Ellis suggested the spelling (not Beetles, which they had chosen), convincing them they were part of the Beats, the individuals who were unfairly being beaten down because they were unconventional. At performances, the Beatles provided the music and Ellis provided the rocketry (poetry read to rock ‘n’ roll).
- Ellis, speaking on a BBC telecast about the Beatles
He showed John Lennon and Paul McCartney how to break down a Benzedrine nose inhaler and sniff the strips inside to produce a mild high. Lennon later recounted in International Times
- "The first dope, from a Benzedrine inhaler, was given to the Beatles (John, George, Paul, and Stuart) by an English cover version of Allen Ginsberg - one Royston Ellis, known as 'beat poet' . . . . So, give the saint his due".
The Beatles immortalized him in the song “Paperback Writer.”
Cliff Richard
Only eighteen years old, Royston wrote Driftin’ With Cliff, in which he described life on the road with Britain’s top pop singer, Cliff Richard. Turner described Royston as
- . . . Britain’s first teenage pundit, an Allen Ginsberg of suburban London. The fact that he wore a beard and had worked as an office boy, duster salesman, gardener, milk-bottle washer, building labourer, and farm hand by the age of eighteen helped confirm the image. . . . His first volume of poems, Jiving to Gyp, was dedicated [to Cliff Richard], and he was soon asked by television programmes to explain what teenagers were all about. He ended up with his own series, “Living For Kicks,” in which he explored the controversial issues of the day such as pep pills and sex before marriage.
Ellis appeared in Wonderful Life (1963, a movie with Cliff Richard) and starred in a TV drama in Sinhala (1998).
Ellis met up with Cliff Richard after 44 years when they had tea together in a hotel near Ellis's home in Sri Lanka during Cliff's visit for a concert in Colombo in February 2007.
Cliff Richard, parenthetically, became a born-again Christian.
The Beats
Ellis, a cogent musical commentator—his 1961 paperback The Big Beat Scene still stands up as an appraisal of early British rock ‘n’ roll—met the fledgling Beatles (in May 1960). McCartney has recalled,
- The first time we ever heard about gayness was when a poet named Royston Ellis arrived in Liverpool with his book Jiving With Gyp. He was a Beat poet. Well, well! Phew! You didn’t meet them in Liverpool. And it was all ‘Break me in easy, break me in easy.’ It was all shagging sailors, I think. We had a laugh with that line.”
- “One in every four men is homosexual,” Ellis told McCartney, according to Barry Miles’s Paul McCartney (1998): "So we looked at the group! One in every four! It literally meant one of us is gay. Oh, fucking hell, it’s not me, is it? We had a lot of soul-searching to do over that little one."
The “one” was their manager, Brian Epstein, who in 1962 signed a management contract with them for twenty-five per cent of their gross receipts, after a certain threshold was reached and after he got them a recording contract.
Ellis met McCartney by chance again in the bar of Le Bristol Hotel in Paris in October 2006 and McCartney recited a line to him from his favourite poem by Royston, "Break me in easy, break me in easy." They swapped stories about the past and promised to meet up again in Sri Lanka.
Polythene Pam
McCartney’s biographer wrote of the Beatles and Ellis:
- “Polythene Pam” was another of John’s songs written in India and originally destined for the White Album. It was inspired by Stephanie, a girlfriend of the Beat poet Royston Ellis, whom the Beatles backed at Liverpool University in 1960. On 8 August 1963, the Beatles played at the Auditorium in Guernsey, the Channel Islands. Royston Ellis was working as a ferryboat engineer on the island and invited John to come back to his flat. John told Playboy: “I had a girl and he had one he wanted me to meet. He said she dressed up in polythene, which she did. She didn’t wear jackboots and kilts, I just sort of elaborated. Perverted sex in a polythene bag. Just looking for something to write about.” Royston Ellis told Steve Turner: “We all dressed up in them and wore them in bed. John stayed the night with us in the same bed.” Paul remembered meeting Royston in Guernsey: “John, being Royston’s friend, went out to dinner with him and got pissed and stuff and they ended up back at his apartment with a girl who dressed herself in polythene for John’s amusements, so it was a little kinky scene. She became Polythene Pam. She was a real character.” John: “When I recorded it I used a thick Liverpool accent because it was supposed to be about a mythical Liverpool scrubber dressed up in her jackboots and kilt.”
Lennon wrote about the Polythene Pam incident:
- "Polythene Pam: That was me, remembering a little event I had with a woman in Jersey, an island off the French coast. A poet, England's answer to Allen Ginsberg, a beatnik that looked like a beatnik who was from Liverpool, took me to this apartment of his in Jersey. This was so long ago. This is all triggering these amazing memories. So this poet took me to his place and asked me if I wanted to meet this girl, Polythane Pam, who dressed up in polythene. Which she did. In polythene bags. She didn't wear jack boots and kilts - I just sort of elaborated - and no, she didn't really look like a man. there was nothing much to it. It was kind of perverted sex in a polythene bag. But it provided something to write a song about".
Bill Harry's Account
Bill Harry, founder of the Liverpool music paper that publicized what became known as the Mersey Beat, wrote of Ellis:
- Early in 1960 John Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe, Rod Murray and I had been to Liverpool University to listen to a poet called Royston Ellis. We later retired to 'Ye Cracke' pub in Rice Street to discuss the evening. The topic of conversation was that Royston was copying the San Francisco poets rather than composing works in the British tradition. We felt that any creative person should really base their work on their own experiences rather than copying someone else’s and the discussion led us to decide to work creatively on what we knew best – and that was life in Liverpool. We decided to call ourselves ‘The Dissenters’ and made a vow that we would work creatively to make Liverpool famous.
Harry confirmed that the Beatles backed Ellis at a place called the Jacaranda:
- I reviewed the book ‘Big Beat Scene’ by Royston Ellis, one of the first-ever books about the British music scene. It began: “Royston Ellis, a bearded teenager who made a name for himself on the television programme ‘Living for Kicks’, visited Liverpool last year. Appearing at Liverpool University’s ‘Festival of the Arts’ where he recited his poetry, he was threatened by students who wanted to set fire to his beard. Later, he recited ‘poetry-to-rock’ at the Jacaranda coffee club, Slater Street, backed by the Beatles.”
- John Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe, Rod Murray and I went to see Royston at his University recital and later retreated to our local art college pub Ye Cracke where we made a decision to call ourselves the Dissenters and use our creative skills to make Liverpool famous. We all got on with Royston and he did recite his poetry at the Jacaranda, backed by the Beatles – and he also stayed for a brief time at the Gambier Terrace flat.
Harry describes Ellis's Big Beat Scene as "one of the first books to be published about the British music scene.
- John would do it with his music, Stuart and Rod with their painting and me with my writing. In some ways I suppose that could have been the spark that ignited my creation of 'Mersey Beat'. The four of us also used to hang around a coffee bar called 'The Jacaranda' in Slater Street, run by an ebullient character called Allan Williams. On the top floor attic of the building, which housed the 'Jac', was a young man selling second-hand albums. I used to chat to him and bought a copy of the ‘Picnic’ soundtrack. He was aware that I’d been assistant editor of 'Pantosphinx', the University charity magazine, and told me that Frank Hesselberg, who owned the Frank Hessy music store, had asked him to edit a magazine called ‘Frank Comments’ but he didn’t know how to go about it – would I do it with him?
Canary Islands, Dominica, and Richard Tresillian
Ellis left England in 1962, “having somehow become a spokesyouth for Britain’s mods, rockers, and beatniks, a role I felt I had outgrown,” he has said. He lived in the Canary Islands (the setting of his first novel, The Flesh Merchants), then from 1966 to 1980 in Dominica, Windward Islands (setting of his million-copy bestsellers such as the historical novel, The Bondmaster, which he psuedonymously wrote as Richard Tresillian). It described the lives and loves of 19th century West Indian whites and the workers on their estates. In Dominica, in addition to being the real estate developer for the Marquis of Bristol and a Reuters correspondent, he edited The Educator, a journal favorable editorially to the Premier, Edward LeBlanc.
Festivals of the World: Trinidad is a children’s book. In the 1980s, again as Richard Tresillian, he wrote a best-selling series, Fleshtraders, again about 19th century miscegenation and adventures, this time set in Mauritius.
On Religion
Asked in 1991 about philosophic humanism, Ellis wrote,
- Since the age of 14, I have not known exactly what I am, nor do I care, having decided at the age of 14 that it was not god who created man but man who created god. My first book, Jiving to Gyp (gyp means hell) published when I was 18, contained raunchy atheistic poems.
Sri Lanka
- Ellis at his home in Sri Lanka, with friends Kumara, Neel, and Gayan]]
Since 1980 he has lived in Sri Lanka and covered the Indian Ocean by writing guide books. India By Rail (1993), an insider’s view, tells how 7,000 trains operate throughout India. He also has written The Story of Tea as well as travel books and articles about Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives.
As to life in Sri Lanka, Ellis has written,
- In the early 1990s I spent several months in a Buddhist monastery in Alawwa, Sri Lanka, at the invitation of the chief priest. I credit him with giving me the serenity one needs to survive in a country as fraught with traumas as Sri Lanka.
- During the 2004 tsunami, I was at sea on a cruise ship, Hebridean Spirit, off Goa and so missed the destruction on Sri Lanka's coast. But fortunately my own cottage, on a bluff overlooking the railway line, the road, and the sea, was not affected. Upon my return I was able to assist several local families in resettlement.
Recent
In 1983, some of Ellis’s poetry from "Cherry Boy" was included in The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse.
A Man for All Islands (1998) is a biography of Maumoon Abdul Gayroom, President of the Maldives. With photographer Gemunu Amarasinghe, he wrote A Maldives Celebration. An autobiographical work, Toni the Maldive Lady: My Story (1999), written with Ellis’s help, is by and about a British lady who considers all Maldivians her family and sends books to libraries in the islands. A Hero in Time (2001) details the atrocities of the 16th century Portuguese in their attempts to convert to Christianity and colonize the Islamic Maldives.
Ellis is author of two editions of The Bradt/Globe Pequot Travel Guide to Sri Lanka and of three editions of The Bradt Travel Guide to the Maldives as well as the Bradt Guide to Mauritius. Also, he edited various editions of the Insight Guides to Sri Lanka and to Maldives. His articles on Sri Lanka and on the Maldives appear frequently in magazines worldwide, including the inflight magazines of Emirates and Sri Lankan airlines.
In 2003 he was appointed the Warden (a form of unofficial consul) for the British residents of the Southern Province by the British High Commissioner in Sri Lanka.
Ellis has lectured on Queen Elizabeth II trips from Bombay to Singapore, he writes extensively, and he is a Life Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society.
A photo and article, “England’s Ginsberg,” was featured in Gay and Lesbian Humanist (Autumn 1999).
As the “voice of a generation” he was interviewed by Britain’s Channel 4 for a series, “Sex on Television,” in which he describes “how it used to be done.” “Forty years later,” he told a journalist in 2001, “I find myself regarded as ‘a spokesman for a generation’ and am being credited with starting the swing that characterized the 1960s. Thus I am becoming a TV personality in England (again) and am working on a new book about the dawn of the ‘60s.”
{WAS, 11 September 1991, 2 Sep 2001, 11 Jan 2006, and numerous conversations}
Books
Poetry:
- Jiving To Gyp
- Rave
- The Rainbow Walking Stick
- The Mattress Flowers
- The Cherry Boy
Biographies:
- Driftin' With Cliff Richard (with Jet Harris)
- Rebel, the story of James Dean
- The Big Beat Scene
- The Shadows By Themselves
- A Man for All Islands
- Toni, the Maldives Lady
Travel:
- India by Rail
- Sri Lanka By Rail
- Bradt Guide to Mauritius
- Bradt Guide to Maldives
- Bradt Guide to Sri Lanka
- Festivals of the World: Trinidad
- Festivals of the World: Madagascar
- A Maldives Celebration
- The Sri Lanka Story
- The Growing Years, 150 years of the Ceylon Planters Association
- History of the Grand Hotel
- History of the Tea Factory Hotel
Fiction:
- Myself For Fame
- The Flesh Merchants
- The Rush At The End
- A Hero In Time
(As Richard Tresillian):
- The Bondmaster
- Blood of the Bondmaster
- The Bondmaster Breed
- Bondmaster Buck
- Bondmaster Revenge
- Bondmaster Fury
- Fleur
- Giselle
- Master of Black River
- Black River Affair
- Black River Breed
- Bloodheart
- Bloodheart Royal
- Bloodheart Feud
Correspondence
Ellis in a letter to Warren Allen Smith comments about Paul McCartney's mentioning him as having turned the Beatles "on to drugs" and describing how Ellis and Lennon were once a threesome in bed with Polythene Pam.
Categories: Freethinkers | Atheists | Novelists | Beatniks | Poets | Homosexuals | Travel Writers
