Jumpin' Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock 'n' Roll Underworld by Keiron Pim, book review

This biography tries to separate facts from fictions around David Litvinoff, an embodiment of the Swinging Sixties

Pedal power: David Litvinoff in Knightsbridge (Philip Levy)

Anyone could make it, it seemed, in Sixties London, and David Bailey's Box of Pin-Ups, with its portraits of characters as diverse as the Beatles, Terence Stamp and Jean Shrimpton, Beaton, Nureyev and the Kray twins, was the perfect representation of that giddy concatenation of new social forces that shaped the modern, with-it world. One figure he might have included was David Litvinoff: thief, thug, aesthete, intellectual.

One of the most extraordinary characters Swinging London had to offer, the embodiment of the world-changing crashing-together of all those cultural and social tectonic plates, Litvinoff ducked, dived and swaggered his way through the fusion of wildly different worlds that made London the epicentre of that mad decade.

Aristocrats, gangsters and pop stars boozed, schmoozed and cruised in a mutual admiration society that seemed to speak of a new social order in which background didn't matter and the possibilities for advancement seemed limitless.

But what a job to pin Litvinoff down. Keiron Pim – who wasn't even born when Litvinoff died after an overdose of sleeping pills – has grafted long and hard to separate the facts from the heady fictions, those perpetrated by the motormouth man himself and the myriad stories about him that still swirl around.

One thing we know for sure is that without Litvinoff, one of the greatest British films might not have been made. Performance, about the mind-altering relationship between a reclusive pop star played by Mick Jagger and a ruthlessly violent gangster brought so thrillingly to life by James Fox, was the definitive film about Sixties London.

It was informed throughout by Litvinoff's long association with the Krays. A friend of Performance's co-director Donald Cammell, he took Fox in hand and turned him into a gangster. And as the street argot poured out of Litvinoff, Cammell took it down and fashioned a script – which Litvinoff, typically, would go on to claim as all his own work.

There are many versions of Litvinoff's precise contribution to the film, but then there are multiple versions of many aspects of his life – such as how he got the two scars that ran from the corners of his mouth. According to one telling, a sword was involved and the Krays did the job themselves. Or was he attacked in the street by a Kray henchman?

Litvinoff's behaviour towards the Krays verged on the suicidal – he would run up huge gambling debts, while openly mocking them. Aside from the scars, punishment came when he was tied on a chair to the outside of his balcony, his head shaved, while a CND march passed below.

The twins were banged up by the time Performance came out, but they weren't best pleased that Litvinoff had given Cammell such a factually accurate depiction of the London underworld they had so recently ruled. He escaped to a cottage in Wales to lie low – but had to leave in a hurry after getting a local bobby high on LSD.

Litvinoff appears to have been several people at once: his friends describe him as "Faginesque", surrounded by a coterie of street kids, or gatecrashing parties and stealing from hosts. He dips in and out of the Fifties and Sixties like a gay, Jewish, vastly entertaining and occasionally violent Zelig. Eric Clapton adored him – they bonded over a deep love of the blues and though he wasn't responsible for the original "Clapton is God" graffito, he made sure its message was spread far and wide. He was a mentor to Jagger, and (falsely) claimed he was the eponymous "Jumpin' Jack Flash". Lucian Freud painted him but couldn't stand him.

He became involved with the colourful Harlech family, whose scion Lord Harlech makes perhaps the definitive judgement on David Litvinofs – "an emblem for the era's failure to deliver on its promise". Pim does a great job of bringing the era and some of its most colourful characters to life.

Jonathan Cape, £16.99. Order at £14.99 inc. p&p from the Independent Bookshop