A few days ago, thanks to my friend Sam, I learned about Sherman Hemsley and Gong.

Let me back up a little bit. Sherman Hemsley, as most of you reading this probably know, played patriarch George on the beloved 1970s sitcom The Jeffersons. Little information on his private life is to be had, but it appears he was an unusual cat. He was also a musician; here he is on Soul Train:

Gong, meanwhile, were a group of European freaks who played psychedelic rock/jazz/prog/whatever. Hemsley apparently was a fan. According to Gong leader Daevid Allen, as quoted on Dangerous Minds,

It was 1978 or 1979, and Sherman Hemsley kept ringing me up. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap because we didn’t have television in Spain (where I was living). He called me from Hollywood saying, “I’m one of your biggest fans and I’m going to fly you here and put flying teapots all up and down the Sunset Strip.”

Now let’s back up again and say, first of all, that I can in no way vouch for the factual veracity of any of this. Wikipedia, for what it’s worth, says that “Hemsley was an enthusiastic fan of 1970s progressive rock bands, including Yes, Gentle Giant, Gong, and Nektar.” Which proves nothing, but anyway here’s a clip of him dancing to Nektar on TV:

I knew nothing about Nektar before this. Wikipedia says

Nektar (German for nectar) is an English progressive rock band formed in Hamburg, West Germany in 1969, by guitarist and lead vocalist Roye Albrighton, keyboardist Allan “Taff” Freeman, bassist Derek “Mo” Moore, and drummer Ron Howden…. The band’s debut album, Journey to the Centre of the Eye (1971), consisted of a single song running over 40 minutes, with the last 100 seconds of the first side repeated at the beginning of the second side to maintain continuity. It was a concept album, following an astronaut who is given overwhelming knowledge by extraterrestrials,

Their “Show Me the Way” is definitively not Peter Frampton’s “Show Me the Way”:

Anyway: Gong’s song “Flying Teapot” was from their album Radio Gnome Invisible Part 1, vintage 1973. It sounded like this:

Now, why would Sherman Hemsley have decided in the late Seventies that he wanted to “put flying teapots all up and down the Sunset Strip”? And why would he have needed Daevid Allen there in person to do that? It is a complete mystery, though one of course suspects cocaine.

In Allen’s telling of the story, Hemsley provided him and his girlfriend with tickets to L.A. via Jamaica. He continues:

Coming down the corridor from the plane, I see this black guy with a whole bunch of people running after him trying to get autographs. Anyway, we get into this stretch limousine with Sherman and immediately there’s a big joint being passed around. I say, “Sorry man, I don’t smoke.” Sherman says, “You don’t smoke and you’re from Gong?”

Inside the front door of Sherman’s house was a sign saying, “Don’t answer the door because it might be the man.” There were two Puerto Ricans that had a LSD laboratory in his basement, so they were really paranoid. They also had little crack/freebase depots on every floor. Then Sherman says, “Come on upstairs and I’ll show you the Flying Teapot room.” Sherman was very sweet but was surrounded by these really crazy people.

We went up to the top floor and there was this big room with darkened windows and “Flying Teapot” is playing on a tape loop over and over again. There were also three really dumb-looking, very voluptuous Southern gals stoned and wobbling around naked. They were obviously there for the guys to play around with.

[My girlfriend] Maggie and I were really tired and went to our room to go to bed. The room had one mattress with an electric blanket and that was it. No bed covering, no pillow, nothing. The next day we came down and Sherman showed us a couple of [The Jeffersons] episodes.

Allen says that the billboards never happened because the “Hollywood PR people” he was supposed to work with “were the cheesiest, most nasty people,” and he skedaddled rather than spend time with them.

Who knows how much, if any of this, is true? Really this whole post has been a very roundabout way of saying that I love the idea of a Flying Teapot room, and I want one in my house, naturally with a sign saying “Don’t answer the door because it might be the man.” My lovely wife will never go for it, but she has to leave town sometime….