To Sir with Love
Tim Patton. Still taken from a fabulous film on the St Anthony’s Alumni website called Shtumm!
As a socialist adult I profoundly disagree with private schools and any educational segregation by privilege, but at age 11 I had only a glimpse of this bad side. From 11 to 13 I was privileged to have my consciousness formed by one of the freakiest and most inspiring heads there could ever be.
Those heady years were 1968 -70 attending St Anthony’s catholic prep school in Hampstead - I was a north London Jewish kid and the headteacher was Tim Patton a committed, strict educator and a deeply creative and innovative one - he was a freak too, deeply into the underground music and scene of the times. Some students will talk of his passion for mime and street theatre - but what I loved, and remember most deeply, was the music - not just the sounds but the physicality of the records - the covers, sleeve notes....the vivid, bold designs, the weight in your hands - inspiring a lifelong love of vinyl records.
50 years on in an instant I can picture myself or a schoolmate holding up Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats - dropping the needle on I’m a little pimp with my hair gassed back, pair a kinky pants and my shoe shined black....or gazing at the weird cover of the third ear band’s alchemy (those gatefold harvest sleeves...). A favourite we always played was Steppenwolf’s the pusher - goddam the pusherman.......We gazed at the picture within a picture within a picture on the sleeve of Floyd’s umagumma - the cow on atom heart mother - and this was a school day morning....we loved the bold African design of Herbie Mann at the village gate, and Miles’ bitches brew - what sounds, what art, what designs.....far out sleeve notes too - Underground, jazz, folk - an education? it just blew our tiny minds. Hell - in some other hands this could have gone wrong but Tim Patton was foremost a committed, caring, if stupendously unorthodox, educator, We respected and trusted him, and learned ...what, who knows, but I’m glad of it.
I remember those moments so vividly, can conjure them in an instant 50 years later (writing this now listening to astral weeks in the little record shop, Vinyl Vanguard, I run in Walthamstow with friends MIke and Ruth).
I hate to say this now but we would often go down from school to Tim’s flat on Arkwright Road and play records - listen, talk, look at covers, and get the best education anyone could ever have, ever.
This is why, at the deepest level, I love music but particularly on vinyl - It transports me to any moment in my time - holding a record, a sleeve, bringing place and friends flooding in (no doubt these memories have some flaws too).
We not only listened to records but took school trips to gigs too....at age 12, I remember two really loud and heavy ones - Steppenwolf and Grand Funk Railroad at the Royal Albert Hall! What a blast!
I would like to check out these memories, sit round a record box chatting with those year 6 St Anthony’s classmates, Nigel, Phil, Adam, David, Charlie and all.....maybe we will, but hey anyway thanks so much for the education Tim, Simon
Simon with his copy of Herbie Mann’s at the Village Gate
photo Simon Lynn