Thursday, July 03, 2008

Whatever happened to Nicky Cramer, the Kings Road Flower Child? Also known as Nicky Kramer, or Nicholas or Nick.


At the Redlands Bust trial Keith Richards said “I can only say that in my profession there are people who are hangers on who you have to tolerate.” One of those hangers-on present at the Redlands house party at the time of the Bust was Nicky Kramer or in some references spelt Nicky Cramer.

He was a person described in the Times as “an exotic” from Chelsea, customarily seen in the King’s Road in red silk trousers and shirt, bells around his neck, and flowers behind his ears. His only known occupation at the time of the party was “forever blowing bubbles through one of those wire wands.”

During the Bust the police initially mistook him for a woman. “He had long fairish hair,” reported a female officer who searched him, “and was dressed in what would be best described as a pair of red-and-green silk ‘pyjamas’. I searched him and this was all he was wearing. I formed the opinion he, too [along with Jagger] was wearing makeup.”

Christopher Gibbs described him thus: “There were one or two innocent creatures caught up in the bust. Including a youngster named Nicky Kramer, thought very wrongly to have something to do with the setup. There was nothing remotely wicked about him. He was a sweet, fey, amiable loon.”

But this opinion of Nicky was not universal. Anita Pallenberg described him as, “Nicky Kramer – he was a lost soul. He just kind of wandered onto the scene probably high on acid and never came down, I think to this day-just lost you know. He was like one of these upper-class penniless people who’d pounce on everybody-he wasn’t good news, really.” From “The Early Stones.”

And in the biography “Keith Richards: Satisfaction” by Christopher Sandford, it said of Nicky at the party in Redlands. “Only Nicky Kramer departed from the prevailing mood. Instead of his usual hippy banter about living in the moment, he gave the impression of being bored or distracted.”

After the Bust was over the conclusion amongst Mick and Keith and their entourage was that one of the partygoers was a traitor. Excluding the trusted friends of the Stones, Gibbs, Fraser, Cooper and Ali Mohammed suspicions naturally fell on the hangers-on. One of the two candidates for informer was Nicky Kramer. David Litvinoff, a thug on the fringes of the entourage with connections to the Krays, visited the unfortunate Nicky and beat him up systematically. When Nicky still did not confess, he was pronounced in the clear.

Nicky has not been heard of since. Do you know what became of Nicky?

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