Monocled Alchemist

Article Published In Men Only, September 1969

Julie Felix Misera Est | In the superficial world of entertainment, Julie Felix is an enigma. She turns down lucrative engagements in case her act interferes with someone having a night out

GIRLS who play guitars and sing Meaningful Lyrics run the terrible risks of becoming anachronisms while they are still young.

In a sense it is fitting that women who elect to complain about man’s injustice to man should do so while stroking that male-like object, the guitar. But the populace by and large has missed the significance of this symbolism, and the girl folk singer is a genre which has receded to the proportions of an interested minority—from whence it sprang.

Still, a few girl folk singers have stayed the course, protesting melodiously and ethnically through the go go and psychedelia to the musical miasma of the present.

Echoes of Joan Baez still reverberate across the Atlantic (although lately that lady is involved in more practical demonstrations of her feelings). In Paris, Melanie, a young American girl, recounts in song her unhappy childhood. And here in Britain, we have Julie Felix.

David Frost

FOR the information of those who do not attend concerts, listen to the radio, buy long playing records, or watch television: Julie Felix is a 28 years old Californian who sings folk music, wears dark hair long, looks a bit like Joan Baez and probably dislikes the comparison.

She lives in an unpretentious third floor flat in King’s Road, Chelsea—the former abode of David Frost.

Julie Felix Misera Est

The address is significant. Through regular appearances on Frost’s television show, she progressed from well-known folk singer to nationally-known star.

Julie is not a celebrity in the British music hall tradition. She doesn’t, for instance, encourage cabaret bookings, where most entertainers reap their richest pickings.

“I don’t like cabaret because I find people just like to get out and have a nice meal and a few drinks and be entertained. And they have a perfect right to. We all need frivolity, that’s good. But I don’t think my music is particularly frivolous so the only cabaret I do is at charity balls where the money is going to a worthwhile cause.

“PEOPLE think I just entertain. And if I get up there and say, ‘What about the injustice . . . have you really thought about this problem in Rhodesia or South Africa . . . is America justified in being in South Vietnam?’, people really don’t want to bother with this if they’re out for a night on the town.”

University of California

Julie’s musical odyssey began some eight years ago after her graduation in speech and drama from the University of California. Her long-standing college romance had foundered, so, like so many young Americans, she hit the road. First stop: Greece.

“I sang in some cafes where they would give me wine and would get invited onto yachts and I would always play my guitar. I met Leonard Cohen, the poet.

“Then I travelled around . . . in Spain I played in some clubs . . . finally in Paris, I completely ran out of money and went back to Spain where I sang for about six months in Ibiza.

“IN Germany I started singing in small cafes and clubs . . . but always because it was a means to an end, I never got involved in the music. It was just something I could do to make a bit of money and keep moving.

“It wasn’t until I came to England that I realised that what I was doing meant more than just killing time. People were really listening to what I had to say. I started to become more honest. In the experience I had gathered I tried to communicate what I had learned and seen . . . to hit some mutual ground with the people who were listening to me.

“Rather than just pure entertainment, I was trying to bring them a philosophical element. Communication, I suppose.”

Julie Felix Misera Est

It’s her ability to communicate which sets her apart from others in her field—and allows her to hold wide appeal in a genre which, strictly speaking, is the preserve of a minority group.

At a concert she may forget the words, fumble her chords — it doesn’t matter. The audience is there for an emotional transfusion (although they themselves probably do not realise it) and, by golly, that’s what they get.

The word communication crops up a lot when Julie is talking. So does another word—worry. Communicate she might when she is singing. But she worries all the time. When she sings, she communicates worry. She moves about in the champagne and tinsel live-for-the-moment world of show business, telling people to worry. Fortunately, they enjoy it, and Julie is doing very well indeed.

That doesn’t stop her worrying though, particularly about her country of origin.

England is my home now

“I’ve been back to America three times—but I don’t want to go back there to live. I’d like to see my family and friends back there more often, but England is definitely my home now.

“Each time I return, things seem a bit better, but I still feel more at ease in England. I think the social structure parallels more closely my beliefs and thoughts about how people should live than America does.

“FOR instance, the freedom one has on television here . . . You can say so much more. You’re free. You may know they recently took off the Smothers Brothers Show because of pressure. Joan Baez said her husband was resisting the draft and the cut out and they cut everything out . . .

‘don’t get hung up with rules’

“They’re really very worried in America because they’re a country at war. They’re worried and they’re living under pressure. It might be a minor point, but a lot of television in America is pre-controlled by sponsors whereas the BBC appears to have a more direct contact with the public.

“The contact between the individual and society is more direct in England than in America where you have huge corporations actually determining the flow of the media — radio, television, concerts . . . ”

Julie Felix Misera Est

Julie had cause for more selfish concern back in April last year. Stopped at Heathrow Airport on her way to the Montreaux Television Festival, she was caught with marijuana. She was fined £50.

But the real damage, many people thought, had been to her public image.

“That worried me terribly (that word again) and I just didn’t know what effect it would have on my future,” she said afterwards.

But, in this case, she needn’t have worried.

FOUR months later, the BBC announced her as the star of a colour television series, “Once More With Felix”. The show was a success. She talked ad lib and sang her favourite songs.

No hit single

“I’m more relaxed now on television and I don’t use a scriptwriter anymore. I say what I honestly think about something rather than some clever line by a scriptwriter which doesn’t fit in my mouth.”

Julie was born in Santa Barbara, California—of a Mexican father and American mother. Three years ago she was reputed to be earning £20,000 a year. She has nine record albums on the market, each of them selling around 15,000 copies. She has never had a hit single.

Just how much she earns nowadays, she would not say but her manager, John Gaydon, assured me she was not poor.

“She can, if she wants to, drive down to the Dorchester Hotel, a matter of ten minutes away, and play for a big ball. For that she’d get £500—and that’s clear profit.

“The same goes for a concert. With only one performer to pay, naturally, that performer will do better than, say, the members of a group who have to split their proceeds four or five ways and pay for expensive equipment as well.”

JULIE’S interest in the male species usually centres on someone creative.

“I like a guy who definitely has his own interests. Otherwise the boy might just be interested in me and my work and then it gets kind of unbalanced. Usually I only date people in some way involved in my profession because that’s where my interests lie.

“Obviously romantic interests are very strong but then again it’s not just a matter of holding hands, you’ve got to know about what you dig and what the guy digs. And unless he has this real living interest in life it’s difficult, you know what I mean . . . “

Julie Felix Misera Est

Julie can speak from experience. She was married in January 1966 to a young folk singer she met on her travels. It lasted just one year.

“WE were married because we were very much in love, but our troubles came when I was lucky enough to find success first. After about a year together we knew we could not demand freedom and still expect to make a success of our marriage. We decided to part.”

It was strange that no-one knew of her secret marriage in a Nottingham Registry Office. She always wore the wedding ring—even on television.

Today, she is still separated from her husband.

“I’m rather disillusioned about marriage, but no regrets. I think people should not be prevented from living together. If people want to get married that’s alright too.

Marriage may not be necessary

“I used to be more adamant about this, but I don’t think about it so much now. It’s largely a matter of chance. I can use logic to describe my ideal man, but I’ll probably fall for some guy who doesn’t fit those categories at all.

“Marriage may not be necessary if you come from London, but if you come from a small community, it probably is. If you’re going to lose your job and your kids are going to be miserable, it isn’t worth it. I used to think everyone should be free. But you have to adjust to audience, a hold over them which is second nature to her.

“I THINK the whole basis of her as an artist and a star—and she is a star—is bound up in her projection on stage and on television.”

Mr. Gaydon wants to make her an even bigger star.

“What I want to do is to get her a hit single.”

Julie Felix Misera Est

Was the planned single likely to be a song written by Julie herself? She talked about the problems of composition.

“If I sit down and say: ‘Right, I’m going to write a song, I usually can’t do a thing. But a lot of times on the road, you have aesthetic distance and it’s easier to write.

“Once I went in and recorded a demonstration tape of twelve songs. Without knowing it, they’d selected one of two songs I’d written. When they’d recorded the basic track, they added strings to sweeten it. All of a sudden there was a small orchestra playing my song—something I’d scribbled on the back of a paper napkin.”

“I always promised myself three months off to go to some log cabin and do nothing but write songs but I never seem to get it together.”

Johnny Halliday

Julie doesn’t like to be lumped in with other folk singers.

“There was a boom where everyone and everything was folk music. But like any category or group you identify with, or what clothes you wear, you’re still an individual. My media is more or less considered folk music but I don’t like to think I’m completely encaged by that label.

“This happens with every fad, I think. People become involved with the superficialities. I’ll never forget seeing Johnny Halliday with his beads and bangles and everything else. When it was Elvis Presley, he was put there in cowboy boots. When it was hippies he was beads and bells. And now, I don’t know, maybe he’s wearing a space uniform or something.

“But there again, I guess he, like everyone else, has to survive.”