NOT BAD FOR A His reinvention of the bob not only liberated a generation, it turned into a Sixties icon. Now 82, he looks back to when women would book the last appointment Vidal Sassoon photographed at his of the day in the hope of getting the coolest haircut ever created – and sex in the salon Bel Air home, August 2010

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s we climb higher and higher up As we walk around a swimming pool and favourite bathroom (huge, white, massive Mulholland Drive into Bel Air, a hidden viewpoint with a steam cabin and power shower, steam jets), he says he loves it the canyons falling away ever Jacuzzi overlooking the valley, his beloved all the more “after coming from Wentworth more dramatically on either side shih-tzus, Lulu and Yoyo, shuffling at our feet, Street, where four families shared one toilet at of the road, the cab driver puts Sassoon reveals he is recovering from two the end of an outside corridor – in January his foot on the accelerator; every bouts of pneumonia, the latest of which, in you can imagine how charming that was. You hairpin bend becomes perilous. June, the doctors thought might prove fatal. hoped someone had sat there first to warm it.” At the highest point, hidden “I said: ‘I can’t die, I’ve got the film and This isn’t said with nostalgia. As his behind trees and at the end of the book coming out,’ ” he says, laughing. aesthetic shows, Sassoon revels in the present. a steep private drive, workmen Self-promotion is second nature: back in the When I ask why he has so much art on the are trying to link Vidal Sassoon’s day, once he had established his salons, he premises, he looks aghast: “We’ve worked, toilets to the main sewerage travelled the world, spreading the Sassoon we’ve made cash and the choice is you can Asystem. Sassoon laughs that in this, one of gospel at massive shows, and later with either buy stocks and shares and open the Hollywood’s smartest neighbourhoods (Jack his shampoos and conditioners. Now he paper every morning to see how they’re doing, Nicholson and Warren Beatty are neighbours), cannot wait to be back on the road, publicising or you can have the best things on your wall.” the loos often become blocked. It’s a gravelly, his autobiography, Vidal, and Vidal Sassoon: Wentworth Street was at the heart of the mischievous laugh that erupts frequently The Movie, produced by his friend Michael Jewish ghetto where Sassoon lived in the East – a laugh at the great crazy sweep of things, Gordon, the founder of Bumble and Bumble. End with his mother and younger brother, underlined by experience – and it encapsulates “People have said I must be mad – I should be Ivor, after the family had been abandoned by Sassoon’s amazing journey from the streets of in Hawaii with my feet in the sand. But that’s his father who, he says, “was fluent in several the East End of to the Hollywood Hills. not me,” he says in his light but craggy voice. languages and probably had sex in all of That he bought – for $6 million, four years The film is reverential: Gordon made it as them”. He was heartbroken when, aged 5, ago – this glamorously sophisticated house an 80th “birthday gift” for Sassoon who, two his mother put him in a Jewish orphanage designed in the late Fifties by modernist years on, grumbles that the pneumonia has in North London, where he was later joined architect Richard Neutra is not surprising. kept him from swimming and has decreased by Ivor. “I thought it was a punishment for It entirely fits Sassoon’s vision of “nothing his muscle mass. He seems frail, stumbles something, but I couldn’t hate her for it. She superfluous”, gleaned from his long-held love once, and breathes carefully. But he looks was doing it for my own good.” He ran away of modern architecture. Constructed on one nifty: he has close-cropped white hair, a tan to see his father, who again rejected him. level, with original artworks by Ellsworth and trendy duds (skinny grey trousers by Yves “When he turned his back on me that time, ‘I DIDN’T THINK CUTTING HAIR WAS DIGNIFIED. I’D HAVE PREFERRED TO HAVE PLAYED FOR CHELSEA’

Kelly, Lucio Fontana (including something Saint Laurent, little grey scarf, black patent I never saw him again.” He died in his early that looks like a flayed egg) and Anish Kapoor Dior trainers). A physio comes around to train seventies. “Ivor and I were told where the (a giant, hollowed out silver ball), this is a his arms with rubber bands. He takes lots of funeral was, and we said: ‘Why should we minimal masterpiece of construction, with vitamins, and every week “a gorgeous Russian go? We didn’t know that man.’ So we didn’t.” partitioned rooms and simple furniture, and nurse” administers globulin to top up his white Ivor, who later became Vidal’s book- perfect for the man who, in the late Fifties, blood cells. When he was ill in bed, he enjoyed keeper, would often ask his brother plaintively customised the geometric cut and layered being brought breakfast while watching his why their mother had placed them in the bob. In his revolutionary open salons, he beloved Chelsea FC (“They’ve been my team orphanage: “There had to have been another gently, and sometimes not so gently, urged for nearly 70 years now”) play live on cable. way.” Sassoon would gee him along. “I’d say: his nervous clients to let their bouffants fall “For a while, I felt very sick,” he says. ‘You remember how we used to enjoy playing free, be chopped into, mussed, reshaped. “But the will pulls you through. I didn’t think soccer in the yard? The fact it was the first Sassoon, who was appointed CBE last about my mortality; I thought: ‘I’m 82, look house we’d lived in where we could have a year, cut ’s hair into its elfin at all the advantages I’ve had, how many proper hot bath?’ And these little pep talks crop for Rosemary’s Baby. He made his name creative, exciting people I’ve met, the salons.’ rallied myself. Right from when I was a kid, international with a range of products; he got If it’s to be, it’s to be. But it’s very hard to I took things as they came; good and bad, I us to Wash & Go. His Sixties very definitely rationalise that there are people a hell of a lot rolled with the punches.” Later, in his teens, swung: he was heterosexual, a prodigious worse off than you when you look so bad, and his mother met the beloved “NG” – Nathan shagger, and mates with photographers such think: ‘Oh, God, is this what I have come to? Goldberg – “who became my father”, says as David Bailey and Brian Duffy and actors Someone give me a cyanide pill.’ That’s a joke.” Sassoon. Goldberg was, according to Sassoon, including and Peter O’Toole. It would have been a bit of a bugger if he a lovely man “with a great sense of self Now, even though the Sassoon name is owned had died, because he and his wife, Ronnie, had even though he had been brought up with by Procter & Gamble, and his salons are run moved here from Beverly Hills only last year. no advantages”. He cared deeply for the boys: by others (whom he knows, at least), he has a “I wanted to be closer to nature,” says Sassoon. he taught Sassoon about music (Mahler, firm, if un-grandstanding grasp of his legacy. Deer press their noses up against the windows, Beethoven), and later offered him £1,400 to set Vidal Sassoon changed not just the style of while the presence of rattlesnakes, coyotes up his salon. “He and my mother walked arm hair, but how we think about it. He wasn’t and mountain lions means Lulu and Yoyo are in arm wherever they went,” recalls Sassoon, precious: he wanted to sell, go global. kept on a tight leash. When we peer into his “and that was very delightful to see.”

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Sassoon was an apprentice first – forced could have been a stand-up comic”. (At a party on New Year’s Day, 2002. “New Year’s Ronnie’s chances of conception. Sassoon loves by his mother – at Adolph Cohen’s salon on recent supper at Scott’s in , Sassoon’s Day is never a good day for me,” he says, to see the family around the pool, his two Whitechapel Road. “It was either become a wife said to Bailey, “I didn’t realise you were so grimacing. “We sent her to Betty Ford and so surviving children (Eden runs a Pilates studio, tailor or a hairdresser in those days,” he says. cuddly,” to which Bailey replied: “Yeah, and many other recovery centres. I tried talking to Elan has a hair-products business) and seven “I didn’t think becoming a hairdresser was I’m a good f***, too.”) The gang was close, he her about drugs, my God, so many times. I did grandchildren, including Catya’s children. very dignified. If I was good enough, I would says, “because we started out with nothing, get frustrated, but addiction is a disease, and He hasn’t cut hair for years, but on a recent have preferred to have played for Chelsea, and and we took the p*** out of each other”. you can’t personally cure it.” Catya’s career as sailing holiday, “There were two chaps on the if I’d had four more years of education, I’d Riotous partying is described in the book, a model at first bloomed, then withered from boat, and I said: ‘Gentlemen, if I am going to have gone into architecture, no question.” although Sassoon claims he has never drug use; in Hollywood, she got a few small have to look at you for two weeks, I am going The family didn’t have the 100 guineas to taken drugs and only got drunk once, “on parts in movies before her addiction killed her. to have to cut your hair. You look dreadful.’ ” pay for an apprenticeship, but Mr Cohen told champagne when I was younger, which put When I ask Sassoon what it is like to lose Sassoon has arthritis in his fingers. It doesn’t the young Sassoon: “You seem to have rather me off it for life”. Not only is he a health a child, he goes silent for nearly half a minute. hurt, he says, but ageing bothers him. “When good manners, young man. Start on Monday.” fanatic, he says: “I had to be up for work every “Total frustration,” he says weakly. “There are I die, they’ll show a picture of me looking old But Sassoon felt like a social misfit, lacked morning. I couldn’t afford to abuse my body.” still days when… Catya days I call them… The and haggard. I want them to show a picture of focus and went from job to job. “I wasn’t a In the salon, Sassoon remembers women last one was when I saw Kirk Douglas [a good me from 40 years ago.” He had the “wattle” child genius, I wasn’t even the best apprentice. deliberately booking the last appointment friend] talk on stage about his son Eric’s death of his neck removed, but has had no other I was a bit of a rebel. If I couldn’t learn of the day, and then wanting to have sex [from pills and alcohol in 2004, aged 46]. surgery or Botox: “I was lucky with the genes.” anything, I was off.” In one salon, he threw his afterwards. And did he? “Yes, if I liked her.” I burst into tears, I couldn’t hold it back. Sassoon still sees famous friends from the scissors into the ceiling in frustration, and ran He’s oddly coy about sex in the book, That’s a Catya day.” Does he blame himself Sixties: Paul McCartney at one of his daughter away to Paris for a fortnight, “which probably although he implies he was having a lot of it. for her death? “Oh, more than that. I made Stella’s fashion shows, for example, and Mick did me a lot of good”. If he got enough tips, “Yes, we all were,” he tells me. “I remember the decision to bring the family to LA, where Jagger at a recent lunch, where they talked he’d take the 25 bus into the West End for sleeping with one woman, and over breakfast drugs are so rife, in the Seventies. It probably about their shared love of Albert Camus. “He’s the theatre matinees. He’d study actors such in the morning she took out a notebook and brought it all on.” More grim silence. knowledgeable,” Sassoon says of Jagger. “He as John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson to crossed my name off. I asked her what the He is estranged from his adopted son, went to a decent school; he put the Cockney improve his diction: “I took elocution lessons.” list was, and she said: ‘I’m going to screw David (again, from his second marriage), who accent in afterwards.” Sassoon was initially His mother, an ardent Zionist, held political the whole of Mayfair, but once only with “has gone his own way”. Their relationship has seduced by the glamour of , but meetings in the family home, and Sassoon each of the men I’ve listed in here.’ Sex was always been rocky: Sassoon tried to enrol him “while I’m not knocking it, reality took a walk joined the , fighting fascists on the like having dinner because penicillin cured in an exclusive black-only school when David here a long time ago”. Not for Sassoon, though: streets of the East End. Later, he fought in the everything back then, and your life wasn’t at was younger, but the boy refused and, ever he helped fund the reconstruction of homes in 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and describes it as “a liberating time, waking each day in the desert, fighting for a cause I believed in”. He returned, aged 22, and thought: “If I’m going to do ‘ONE WOMAN I SLEPT WITH, IN THE MORNING SHE hairdressing, I’d better be serious about it.” His next job, with the legendary Raymond, TOOK OUT A LIST AND CROSSED MY NAME OFF’ was the most instructive: the master of the so-called “teasy-weasy” showed Sassoon “all Sassoon in his fl at in you could do with a pair of scissors”, even if the Sixties with Grace risk if you were promiscuous. The sexual since, it seems, father and son have been in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and his styles were more elaborate than Sassoon’s Coddington of Vogue freedom was so exciting, I took it for granted.” opposition. “We don’t speak and I hope that contributes to Jewish organisations. “I’m a friskier vision allowed. “But you didn’t mess He didn’t feel he was emulating his father: “I will change,” says Sassoon. He shrugs, smiles: much stronger Zionist than I was. Whatever with Raymond: he was an amateur wrestler.” wasn’t married. I wasn’t cheating on anybody.” “But I get on with life.” That, in a clipped but Israel does, it can’t do right. There is a natural In 1954, Sassoon opened a small salon, and Sassoon claims he has never cheated emphatic nutshell, is the Sassoon way. He hatred of ; it has been there for hundreds soon after that came his first grand affair, on was that 45 minutes of haircut: did it suit her sitting on the floor having a drink”), and was on any of his wives, “but, fortuitously, the propels himself forward; refuses to dwell of years. ‘Never again’ means never again.” New Bond Street, all dark brown and silver. bone structure? Was I sending her out looking once summoned to an airport where Elizabeth marriages didn’t last long, heh-heh”. His first on regrets, hurts and might-have-beens. Philanthropy is “the least” he can do: he “It was like an art gallery,” a former better than she looked before she came in? Taylor gave him a hairbrush, and said, “You wife, Elaine Wood, worked as his receptionist, Sassoon’s third marriage, to Jeanette was raised in a country that, after the war, member of staff recalls in the film. “I made I was a bit nutty to work with, but it wasn’t know something about hair…” even though and left him for waterski champion David Hartford-Davis, foundered because she “benefited from progressive socialism”. In promises I wouldn’t tease or backcomb hair ego, it was a demand for perfection. One her piled-high do was the antithesis of a Nations in the late Fifties. “He’s dead now, and preferred horse riding to him, he says. His LA, he says, it is seen as a bad thing, and he or lacquer it to death,” Sassoon recalls. “It customer demanded I cut her hair a particular Sassoon cut. He cut for Christine Keeler and she lives in Wales. I introduced them. I didn’t fourth and present wife, Ronnie, a 59-year- is “torn” because he is seduced by the rampant liberated women. They could come in once way, and when I told her we didn’t do that Mandy Rice-Davies during the Profumo affair: feel jealous; that just leads to a hardening of old former marketing executive, is “a different can-do individualism here: “What they don’t every four weeks or so, rather than three kind of work, she said: ‘You’ll do what I tell “Some of the customers objected to their the soul. I thought it was better for two people kettle of fish. I’m still fascinated with her, have is a collective consciousness to help times a week. Women with less money would you, young man.’ I said: ‘No, but I will book presence, so I sent a stylist to their homes.” to be happy than three unhappy.” The split and I always think when the fascination others.” He remembers suddenly the public save up for a cut.” Inspired by Marcel Breuer’s you a taxi which will take you somewhere He styled his friend , once from his second wife, Beverly Adams, in goes, the love goes.” It was she who decorated bath houses of the East End, where you’d design for the Whitney Museum, Mies van where they will give you what you want.’ cutting her ear, and Frances Shand Kydd, 1980, after 13 years together, was more painful this home with minimalist flourish, it was she shout your vessel’s number for an additional der Rohe’s Seagram Building, and Frank Lloyd “The customer was never right unless she the mother of Diana, Princess of Wales. and complicated. She was the mother of his who brought him specially cooked suppers in sluicing of hot water, and marvels again at Wright’s constructions in Chicago, he began had the good taste to truly know what suited (“She always brought a general with her as children, Catya (born 1968), son Elan (born hospital when he was ill recently. how far he’s come… “Heh-heh.” The last time his own revolution, cutting into and around her – then she was right.” What if they hated an escort.” Once, when he walked them to the 1970) and Eden (born 1973). “She felt she was “I was 62 when we met, she was 39. I he was in London, he says, smiling, his old the shape of the head tightly, the fringes the cut? “I’d say: ‘Darling, in two or three door, a cab driver from the East End whom losing her identity. I made some stupid asked if the age difference mattered to her, mate Michael Caine approached him in the heavy and angled. The biggest compliment he weeks, it will grow and you come back as Sassoon knew drove past and shouted: “Wotcha, decisions with the business which affected and she said: ‘Not at all.’ ” How was the sex, Ivy, and said: “They haven’t found anyone received was when Breuer said it was obvious our guest.’ Sometimes it was just a case of Vid, ’ow’s your bum?” “Good lord,” the general what kind of a parent I was. I was out doing I ask. “Brilliant, the best,” he says, adding to replace us yet, have they, Vid?” ■ that he had taken his cue from architecture. getting accustomed to a new shape.” said. “I shall dine on this for a month.”) tours all the time. There were tense dinner miserably that the doctors have told him not “I was crazy,” he admits. “I would be As Sassoon’s fame grew, more salons As for Sassoon’s boys’ gang, Brian Duffy parties and late-night arguments. I wouldn’t even to attempt it now with his body so weak, Vidal: the Autobiography is published by dancing around the chair, almost breaking the opened in the UK and internationally, and was “wild” and “Terry” Donovan “great fun. call us great friends now.” “but we’ll get back to it, heh-heh”. The couple Macmillan on September 3. It is available from ankles of the apprentices who were trying to famous customers streamed in. He cut Ava I have no idea why he committed suicide.” This has surely been exacerbated by Catya’s wanted to have children, but the doctors told The Times Bookshop, priced £18 (RRP £20) on

VIDAL SASSOON INC VIDAL pass me things. The one thing that mattered Gardner and Rita Hayworth’s hair (“She loved David Bailey “is the funniest man alive; he death at 33 from a drugs overdose after a them that constant travelling was undermining 0845 2712134; thetimes.co.uk/bookshop

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