The Risk Taker When he was a mere boy, Robert Paterson decided that - - PDF document

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The Risk Taker

When he was a mere boy, Robert Paterson decided that he would 'do things with music'. In due course he became a fabulously successful impresario, a friend to the rich and famous. Then it all went wrong...

By Cal McCrystal — 23 JUNE 1991 THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

ROBERT PATERSON was two months short of his 51st birthday when he died on the afternoon of 12 May 1991. He had been on a life-support machine in Westminster Hospital's intensive care unit for three days. Before that, he had been on income support. Before that, he had been very rich and much sought after by the famous. In Paterson's heyday, the 1970s, it was his custom to hire West End restaurants (at around £5,000 a go) for entire evenings, to fly his staff on unexpected holidays to Hong Kong and

• Bali. He had grand houses, to which world-

renowned musicians would be invited for the entertainment of the latest Paterson

• coterie. He enjoyed the abiding esteem of

some of the legendary figures of our time, among them Marlene Dietrich, Igor Stravinsky, Juliet Greco, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Liza Minnelli and Duke Ellington. Yet he died penniless and alone. In the council flat that was to be his last refuge, his 1991 diary boasted little remaining contact with the great and the

• glittering. It is a plain office diary, which

reveals a fastidious nature vainly coping with ruin: "Stanley ... £20", "Brian ... £50". The trivial debts to acquaintances willing to part with what they could afford are listed neatly in red ballpoint. The third-floor flat in Elm Park Gardens, Chelsea, contained much evidence of his former greatness. Framed correspondence from Dietrich, Stravinsky and Terence Rattigan hung on a wall; alongside a photograph of a grinning Paterson measuring his large nose against Barry Manilow's. There were pictures of Paterson with Prince Charles and Bing Crosby, and a cartoon of Paterson given him by David Frost when they were

• partners. Records of favourite concert

performances were stacked in a corner. Modest bookshelves were stuffed with biographies of musicians both here and

• gone. On the floor lay a couple of pieces of

Indonesian sculpture. A couple of weeks ago I met Paterson's mother here. She has failing eyesight and was using a magnifying glass to inspect her son’s possessions. An arthritic hip restricts her movement. She had a somewhat imperious manner, but, after hesitation, she de- scribed an incident that seemed to confirm friends' estimate of her only son: that he was born great but, in the final years

• f his precarious life, seemed intent on

thrusting greatness from him. The incident concerned Robert Paterson's childhood, the early part of which was spent on Dartmoor, where his wealthy parents had a large house. Because the child suffered with severe asthma, Kenneth Paterson, an officer with the Gurkhas, sent his wife and son to South Africa for the curative climate. They remained in Cape Town for 10 years, visiting England

• annually. At Bishop's School (South Africa's

Eton), the boy developed a passion for cricket. "Passion" is a word that crops up frequently when Paterson's name is

• mentioned. His mother recalled: "When

Robert was about 10, our car broke down on the way to Cape Town and we had to wait for a bus. After a time the bus was stopped by two Afrikaaner policemen, big burly chaps, who came aboard and began searching for someone. They went upstairs and arrested this black man, who may have been drinking – I'm not sure. One of the policemen had caught hold of his ankles and

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was pulling him downstairs. His head was going bump-bump-bump on the metal edges; dreadfully cruel, though nobody seemed to see anything very unusual in it. But Robert was very angry. He marched, this small boy, right up to one of the

• policemen. He was quivering with passion

and rage. 'You are wicked, wicked, do you hear! And this is a wicked country. And I will not stay here! I shall return to England!’ The policeman was very impressed by the boy's bravery. He said to Robert: 'Oh, don't worry yourself, sonny; they've got heads like coconuts.' " Paterson's intolerance

• f

the deliberate infliction of indignity on his fellow man stayed with him all his life. He would explode in anger if one of his companions in a restaurant snapped his fingers at a waiter. Racism, even milder forms of it, had a similar effect. As practised in South Africa, it should have turned him resolutely against that country. But it didn't, for he had cause to be grateful for his years there. Around the time of the bus incident, Julius Katchen, the American concert pianist, arrived in Cape Town for a recital. Mrs Paterson bought tickets, as well as a Katchen recording of Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, which she presented to her son as an introduction to classical music. The boy was determined to have it autographed, and sought out the pianist at his hotel hours before the recital. Katchen, then 24, signed the record and promised to play the piece as an encore. The boy told him: "I am going to do things with music

• ne day."

In the 1960s, when Paterson began to "do things with music", Katchen – the first pianist to play the complete works of Brahms in four recitals – allowed him to set up his British concerts. It put the young promoter firmly on the road to success. When Katchen died of cancer in 1970, Paterson was said to be

• inconsolable. And when Paterson himself

died, his mother had Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring played at the cremation service. IT IS difficult, following a long decline and death, to reconstruct the former dimensions of a figure such as Paterson. Even David Frost, seldom at a loss for words, struggles for adequate phrases to describe his friend: "He was ... he was a great and good man." IIItyd Harrington, former deputy leader of the Greater London Council and a familiar figure at concerts and first nights, describes him as "a latter-day Diaghilev with a fine line in grand

• vercoats, expensive cigars, generous bowls
• f

brandy and large breakfasts at Claridge's." Marlene Dietrich called Paterson "my Führer". It was her habit, when people telephoned her Paris home, to pretend to be a Spanish maid and announce: "Miss Dietrich is not at home." Paterson, calling from London or New York, would explode in laughter: "1 know it's you, you old cow!" A friend said: "Robert could say things to her because he behaved normally." Paterson

• nce

said in a radio programme that he had originally found Dietrich "a tremendous challenge, not only because she was a demanding lady, which she had a right to be, but because I was rather young-looking when we first met, and she had always been represented by older impresarios. "We did have a problem after an immaculately run dress rehearsal, when Marlene picked an argument with her agent

• ver something which had not actually
• happened. So I ran from the back of the

theatre and said: 'Miss Dietrich, please address criticisms to me. I'm producing the show.' And she left the theatre, slamming the door. But that evening, which was the

• pening night, I was summoned to her

dressing room. She asked the two people she was with to leave and very deliberately locked the door. She looked at me and said: 'this morning, Mr Paterson (in those days she called me that; we got much more friendly later on), you recognised that I was behaving like a spoiled child. And as you probably know, every German girl needs a

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Führer. You have now become my Führer.' Since then, we had great fun." The "fun" included Paterson and Dietrich travelling across London on the tube, she, "disguised" in jeans and large sunglasses, and picnicking on caviar and champagne on the train to Brighton. Harrington got to know the impresario in 1974. "I was asked one night, as number two on the GLC, to host the royal box for the Russian ambassador at a Juliet Greco concert in the Globe Theatre. Robert Paterson confronted me, demanding to know who I was and what 1 was doing there. I explained the last-minute arrangement and we all calmed down, until halfway through the concert when the Russians suddenly got up and left. They'd received a message that their military attaché had been found in a gay pub fraternising with some guardsmen. It was

• hilarious. After the show, Robert invited

me to join him at the Savoy with Miss Greco and that was the beginning of a strong, enduring friendship. He was extremely generous, and there was graciousness about him, even when Miss Greco was doing her Left Bank bit. "But I think I saw the danger signals. He would sometimes stand at the back of an audience and lead the clapping and shout 'Bravo!' to get things going. As for celebrating in a restaurant after an amazing concert by Shirley Bassey – those

• ccasions were like dinners for the
• Borgias. We'd eat and drink a lot. And I

think what happened later on – I have no proof of it – was that Robert was taking

• risks. He was mercurial. Like a lot of

manic-depressives, he would shoot off in all directions. There was some trouble over Miss Bassey's contract, which angered her. Robert was scarred by the experience because he had a high professional streak in him and great loyalty to his artists.” WOMEN and booze were in the fatal combination that eventually brought Paterson down. In 1968, he had married Sybille Stock, a tall blonde German student whom he met in Paris while on a trip to

• ffer his services to Stravinsky. At the time

they were both engaged, she to a cousin of the French pianist Jacques Loussier; he to Princess Sharmini, – a Sri Lankan princess hailed by Annigoni as "one of the most beautiful women in the world". Both broke

• ff their engagements. Sybille recalls:

"Robert was very persuasive and charming, and bombarded me with flowers and phone calls." He was handsome, energetic; his company, Robert Paterson Management, was gaining an impressive clientele, among them Loussier, the opera singer Leontyne Price and the conductor Andre Previn (Price and Previn were at the wedding). The Patersons appeared to be awash with money. Again and again they moved house to more expensive and fashionable parts of London. There were offices off the Champs-Elysees in Paris and in Wigmore Street in London. The cigars got bigger and Paterson more gregarious. At times he seemed intent on fitting the popular image

• f the traditional impresario. But friend

insist that he never displayed any trace of

• vulgarity. He seemed to place no value on

the wealth his work brought in. Then his marriage disintegrated. "When we parted in 1974," Sybille says, "Robert moved to a very large house in Kensington Park Road. Maybe when you live together, work together and travel together, the sparkle goes. The woman who moved in with him was a hippy sort. She was trying to push him into the film business He bought scripts that were never made." If Paterson wasn’t living beyond his means, then he feared no rainy days. IIItyd Harrington was "staggered" by the style and

• pulence at Kensington Park Road, which

was "fabulously" furnished with antiques. A visitor might arrive one evening to find Vladimir Ashkenazy at the grand piano in the drawing room. Paterson was spreading his wings further and further. In London, he would say impulsively to Harrington: Let’s go for a walk on the beach in Cape Town,” or “How about going to watch cricket in Australia!”

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With David Frost, Paterson began

• rganizing major concerts in Sydney in the

mid-Seventies. Their euphoria is captured in the triumphalist cartoon Frost presented to Paterson, showing the latter astride the Sydney Opera house. Among the artists signed up by their company were the Beach Boys, Perry Como, Sammy Davis Jnr, Bob Dylan, Roberta Flack and Bob

• Hope. These ventures required a lot of

money up-front, and Paterson borrowed heavily from the National Westminster Bank and from ANZ Bank III Australia, signing personal guarantees. It was in Sydney, towards the end of the Seventies, that Paterson collapsed with a suspected heart attack. It was actually pericarditis, a condition that

• ften

simulates coronary thrombosis and can be extremely debilitating. He was in hospital for several months. Authority to run his end of the business was delegated to an associate, Mistakes were made. The business crashed. Frost, a more stable and resilient promoter with Australian television interests, survived. Paterson went under. His love affair was on the rocks too, so he hit the bottle harder than

• ever. Friends were alarmed: "While he

continued to be beautifully dressed, charming and optimistic, he was damaging himself," one said. "I remember Robert joined us at a concert in London and we chatted for a few seconds. Suddenly he keeled over, stiff as a board. I managed to have him carried out without the Press getting wind of it." Weaker, less talented men have over- come such setbacks. But it seemed to some acquaintances that Paterson was haunted by something else; something he wouldn't

• discuss. It may have been something to do

with his parents. Paterson, of course, hardly knew his father, an unhappy man who did not join his family in South Africa and drank himself into the grave just as his son returned home at the age of 16. According to Mrs Paterson, "My husband was the soul of honour and integrity but couldn't control his drinking. It's a disease. It may have been handed down…. " Paterson's relationship with his mother was complicated. According to Sybille, "Robert went through life desperately trying to win her approval, which wasn't always given.” In Paterson’s eyes, his mother highlighted his failures rather than his successes. As a child in Cape Town, he was encouraged to take up the violin. He tried some lessons and put it down. After trying the piano, the school music teacher told Mr Paterson: "I feel it's wrong to go on taking your money." When I mentioned to her that her son's friends regarded him as an accomplished pianist, Mrs Paterson was sceptical: "I don't think so. I had a grand piano which I gave away because he wouldn't play it." At 16, Robert Paterson was sent to Priory Park in Bath to cram for university. He was told he would be expected to enter his father's old college, Clare, in Cambridge. He turned up for the entrance exam, but suddenly stood up, tore up the papers and walked out. He did not inform his mother. Instead he took a train to Cornwall to stay with friends for six weeks. According to Sybille, Paterson's mother told her a very

• dd thing a few days after his death. "She

said that when Robert was 12, his father had warned her: 'Beware of Robert. He is an enemy of the family.'” THE FAMILY once was a power in the land and on sea. Its money came from Carter Paterson, one of the biggest shipping firms in Britain earlier this century. When the Patersons travelled abroad, ships'

• fficers

grovelled. Eventually, it was absorbed by British Rail and

• ther
• enterprises. But the family retained its

reputation of great wealth. "Mothers of daughters used to ask me if Robert was due to come into his fortune at 21 or 25," Mrs Paterson says. "I didn't tell them there was no fortune." Eschewing further education, Robert Paterson set out to "do things with music". He got a job with Victor

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Hochhauser's promotions company, and within four years, aged 24, he was beginning to build his own business. By 1979 he was taking two-page advertisements in the show business paper Variety, boasting "15 Amazing Years of Promotion" and declaring: "These pages probably represent the most extraordinarily prodigious and versatile list of artists ever presented by one office....” But by 1983, after the Australian debacle, he was bankrupt. His ex-wife, now remarried, grieved for his losses. She wrote an impassioned letter to the ANZ bank in Sydney on behalf of "a friend who is unwell, broken and homeless", and appealing for a respite. David Frost paid

• ff some of Paterson's debts. "David has

been very kind," Sybille says. But it seemed nothing could halt the impresario's downward slide. "God is punishing me for what I did to Sybille," Paterson said despairingly to Susha Guppy, the Iranian artist who sang at a small memorial service for Paterson earlier this month. He had nowhere to live. His mother, who owns the lease on two Chelsea flats, allowed him to stay in one until he could find alternative

• accommodation. Illtyd Harrington finally

found him a place, a damp basement flat

• n Elsham Road, which no other council

applicant would agree to occupy. Within weeks Paterson's asthma returned. A doctor's letter managed to secure the flat in Elm Park Gardens. Paterson never really abandoned the idea of a comeback. He had been toying with the notion of writing a screenplay about Diaghilev, whom he so strongly resembled at

• ne

period. But his alcoholism made this unlikely. Sybille brought him food rather than money with which to buy it, for she knew he would spend it on drink. His mother once sent a cheque for £1,000 to Austin Reed to replace her son's threadbare clothes. Nor did the former impresario give up his rather grand airs. If a well-to-do friend offered to buy him dinner, Paterson would opt for the most expensive table in town, and would sit at white linen and shoot his cuffs as though the world remained his

• yster. But mostly he frequented pubs.

IN ONE of these, in 1989, he met Penny Burton. She is a former Daily Mirror

• journalist. Her wit succeeded in lighting up

"the saddest eyes I've ever seen". Within a fortnight they decided to marry, planning the ceremony for 1992. They would live in a cottage in Cornwall. To revive Paterson's self-confidence, she gave him a fiftieth birthday party at Au Jardin des Gourmets in Greek Street. The comedian Dave Allen was there, along with Illtyd Harrington and Sir Kenneth Bradshaw, director of the Compton Verney Opera Project, and a dozen others. Paterson was uplifted. But on the heels of this small success, Ms Burton herself became ill. Paterson lost ground. "A cloud would descend on him," she says. Two months ago, Sir Kenneth Bradshaw persuaded him to join him for dinner at the Garrick Club (of which Paterson was a member) with Harold French, the veteran theatrical producer. Bradshaw was stunned by Paterson's appearance and by his withdrawn demeanour. On 9 May, an ambulance took Paterson to hospital. He was coughing blood and had difficulty breathing. He slid into a

• coma. Hoping he could hear, Penny Burton

read aloud to him. Later, summoned to the hospital, she was delayed by traffic and found him dead. "I held his hand. It was already cold. With all the tubes removed, his face had a marbled elegance." Paterson's diary revealed a dutiful son. The entry for 8 March says, "Post Mother's Day card." And the entry for 16 March revealed a dutiful ex-husband, reminding himself

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his and Sybille's "23rd anniversary". He never stopped trying to rise above his own debris; when his council-flat ceiling collapsed, he said: "At least it didn't fall on my head!” But as Illtyd Harrington

• bserved: "The black dog of melancholia

got him in the end."