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By Root 1111 0

as I was on “Pilcher’s list.” Detective-Sergeant Norman Pilcher, a notorious London copper, had made a name for himself on the drug squad by busting a number of famous rock stars, including Donovan, John Lennon, George Harrison, Keith Richards, and Mick Jagger. Ginger said he had a tip-off from someone he knew in the police force to the effect that I was next on the list. I immediately called Stigwood, who had a pile in North London, the Old Barn, Stanford, to ask him what I should do, and he told me to come and stay with him for a few days. That first night that I spent at Stigwood’s, the Pheasantry was raided by the police, who planted hash everywhere. I felt terrible because they busted Martin and Philippe and I had not warned them, thinking that Pilcher would be interested only in me. I will never forgive myself for that.

The bust at the Pheasantry was the harbinger of another warning, because a few days later Ginger told me he had heard on the grapevine that Pilcher wanted to pitch a kind of deal to me, which was, if I got out of town and moved away from his patch—his territory—he wouldn’t bother me. In fact, I felt quite ready to move, and as for the first time in my life I actually had some money, I realized that I could use it to buy a house. Up until that point I hadn’t really thought much about earnings. Rather than pass through our hands, it went straight to management, and we were paid a weekly salary. Things like rent were paid directly from the office. On a day-to-day basis I really didn’t spend that much, and most of what I had went for clothes at Granny Takes a Trip. So I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on with our money until I made the decision to move out of town.

The panic to get out of Chelsea was a catalyst to go out and buy some property magazines. I knew that if I was going to live in the country, I wanted to be somewhere near Ripley. So I went to look at a few houses near Box Hill and places like that, in nice countryside that had views of the Surrey Hills. One day I was looking through Country Life and I stopped at a photograph of what looked like an Italian villa, complete with a tiled terrace and a balcony. I rang the agent and arranged to meet him there.

When I drove there for the first time, my initial impression as I approached the house down the drive was how perfectly situated it was, perched on the side of a hill and surrounded by beautiful woodland, with a beautiful view looking out toward the south coast. I remember going in the front door and it still had a few furnishings and the odd curtains from the previous owner. It was all rotting and musty, but I just fell in love with it. As soon as I walked in, I had the most incredible feeling of coming home.

The house, called Hurtwood Edge, was rumored to have been designed by the great Victorian architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, planner of the imperial capital of New Delhi. This turned out to be false, the real architect having been Robert Bolton. The front door had a little porch attached to it, to stop drafts from coming in, and from there you could look straight into the living room, which had windows on three sides, one looking out over a terrace and the others with views across the hills. When I walked around the garden, I was amazed to find five or six fully grown redwoods there, which I imagined must have been hundreds of years old and planted long before the house was built. A palm tree and poplars also graced the property, giving the whole place a Mediterranean feel. The agent told me, falsely again, that the garden had been designed by the celebrated horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll. I wanted to buy Hurtwood there and then and move in right away. When I returned a second time to see if my initial favorable impression had been sound, I surprised the agent and his girlfriend sunbathing naked on the terrace. It turned out they were actually living in the house, which had been empty for two years, no one before me having shown any interest in it. I think it gave them a bit of a shock to realize they’d have to move out.

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