www.historypin.org/en/phop/
TAKE IT TO THE BRIDGE:
A brief musical memoir as submitted to
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but now I had ten platters of my own.
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(offered to us by Saul Gelpern, who later managed Suede) and our single got played by John Peel on Radio 1. Our next record was to be a 12 inch 4 track EP. Kamera booked studio time at Fairview in Hull (where the Housemartins recorded). We cut the 4 original tracks, and on the drive home that night to Grimsby we all reverentially listened to the cassette. Oh yes, we were going to make it! We knew we had something going because people loved the few gigs we’d played.
But then fate took a hand. Kamera records went bust. The master tapes for our EP vanished into some accountant’s receivership black hole, and all we had left was our cassette. Over the coming months, the band fell apart.
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joined them on stage as Dave Kelly went through the soul catalogue. No man could have had a better night to celebrate his half century.
TAKE IT TO THE BRIDGE:
A life in Music: What it’s all meant to me.
A brief musical memoir as submitted to
the BBC’s People’s History of Pop website.
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| THE MAN WHO STARTED IT ALL |
It had already started even before those 10 78’s which accompanied the record player I received for my 14th Christmas in 1957; although I’d been blown away by Lonnie Donegan, when I played the first 78 - Reet Petite by Jackie Wilson, I knew there was much, much more to enjoy out there. I’d heard the best of it all by getting up at 5 am in the dark, doing my homework whilst listening the US charts on Europe’s AFN (American Forces Network) which, like Radio Luxembourg, fades in and out aurally like waves washing up a pebbled beach: when the sun came up, the music vanished,
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| The magnificent Jackie Wilson |
The first 45 rpm EP I bought was by Johnny Cash; it included I Walk The Line, and it even impressed my Mario Lanza-loving Dad.
Seeing Buddy Holly at the Regal in Hull on March 19th1958 - I couldn’t afford a ticket so I stood outside the stage door and gazed up as he stuck his head from the dressing room window, threw out some photos - but I never got one. It was the same year, same venue, when I waited patiently for Lonnie Donegan to get his autograph, and he aggressively told me:
“Piss off kid - can’t you see it’s fuckin’ raining?” But as an idol, he did not fall.
Getting my first £1.10 shillings battered, finger-slicing second hand Framus guitar from Poole’s Corner pawn shop in Hull, and taking it to sea with me. That guitar would be my passport to everything; parties, musical evenings in New Zealand and Australia; I traded it in for a new Yamaha model, learned all of Buddy Holly’s songs and the full Donegan canon, and those six strings remained a friend for life.
Then in the early 60s, joining bands in Hull, with my new Watkins Westminster amplifier and Hofner Verithin guitar, both on Hire Purchase thanks to my mother. With The King Bees I almost made it; leaving the band because they wouldn’t let my girlfriend travel in our van. My temporary replacement was a young Hull Corporation gardener called Mick Ronson.
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| My Hofner Verithin. I wonder who has it now? |
Music brought me the love of my wife, (50 years of marriage to celebrate in 2016). I gave her guitar lessons; we went to gigs; the first being P.J. Proby on the tour where he split his pants; The Pretty Things, many others, we got deeply into the Blues; saw John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Rev. Gary Davis, Chuck Berry, and many more. The Stones, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates at Hull City Hall, Supertramp at the Regal; Hall and Oates at Sheffield City Hall, and I was in Hull City Hall on February 15 1970 when The Who recorded their album (which was known for years as ‘Live in Leeds’ but this has since been rectified…)
Marriage and children restricted me to guitar playing in the kitchen, but my broad knowledge of music landed me a dream job as manager of the large record department at Gough & Davy in Hull. From there I was headhunted by Polydor/Deutsche Grammophon and became involved, averaging 1,000 miler per week, with promoting Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, followed by a stint on the pop catalogue launching albums like Saturday Night Fever, Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene and Sham 69, among many others.
Then it was back into music retail, as manager of Gough & Davy’s Grimsby shop, where despite my age (mid 30s by then) I became a champion of the town’s punks for stocking the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Buzzcocks and others. The punks would take me to ‘educational’ gigs and I’d write reviews for the NME, Sounds and Melody Maker. I managed a local synth band, White Russia, and we got their single played by John Peel. As punk faded, some of its more sophisticated drop-outs took me to see A Certain Ratio at Rockafellas in Leeds. (My review was in the NME) I had seen the future; my guitar frenzy re-surfaced and although two decades older than anyone around me, we decided to form a band. What swung us was to be my favourite gig of all time: the catalyst which took me back to playing live: Dexy’s Midnight Runners at Cleethorpes Winter Gardens on July 10 1980.
The soul-stirring, superb Dexy's Mk 1.
The venue was in uproar; a huge fight between some unruly skinheads was in progress on the dance floor. Then all the lights went out; all we could see was the lights on the band’s amps: then, in the scuffling darkness, Kevin Rowland’s voice rang out from the PA: “For F**s sake, BURN IT DOWN!” and that chest-crushing brass exploded into the hall, the skinheads stopped scrapping, and with the rest of us, stood drop-jawed in deference to this almighty soul sound. What a night. Within weeks 8 of us has formed a brass section, found a drummer, I played bass, and Group Therapy was formed. We got a short deal with Kamera records,
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| Group Therapy in Grimsby 1982: Photo Grimsby Evening Telegraph |
Then came my long association with The Blues Band. (Paul Jones, Tom McGuinness, Dave Kelly, Hughie Flint/Rob Townsend, Gary Fletcher - now in their 35th year, 22 albums, and still NEVER invited onto Jools Holland’s Later!)
I became a close friend of the band’s Dave Kelly and especially his late sister, Jo Ann Kelly. My wife and I ran their fan club for 25 years. I wrote the band biography, Talk To Me Baby, in 1994, never imagining they’d still be playing in 2015. When I had my 50thbirthday party, Dave Kelly, Gary Fletcher and drummer Rob Townsend drove up to Humberside from London, with equipment and road crew, for no fee (!) and were the stars at my party, at which the brass section from Group Therapy
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| The Blues Band 1982 |
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| The Expanding Wallets |
During the Miner’s Strike we formed what we called a ‘Radical Skiffle’ group, The Expanding Wallets, and toured all over for miner’s benefits. Totally acoustic, we also busked wherever we could.
By the time I’d reached pension age, I was living in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, still mad for the blues and R&B, and ended up fronting a local band, NiteMayor, so called because our drummer, Tony Egginton, was the elected Mayor of Mansfield. On my 70th birthday at Boothy’s Club in Mansfield, all those punks and the line-up of Group Therapy turned up and we spent a night on stage with a packed invited audience playing everything from English folk, with live poetry, R&B, with other special guests, including the ‘Paul McCartney’ of the Bootleg Beatles.
Music is never far away. As well as countless CD liner notes, I’ve written tour brochures for many artists, including B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Mark Knopfler, The Temptations, Four Tops and many others, including Smokey Robinson, who invited me up to his dressing room to thank me ‘for the words’. A privilege indeed.
I’m 72 now. Surrounded by 3,000 records, both vinyl and CDs, I’ learning Flamenco guitar and Bluegrass banjo. I’ll probably not get the chance to play live much now. Will I have another mega pop bash on my 75th? Watch this space.
Music: the sweetest form of love and emotion there ever was. Next to my wife and children, it’s been the driving force of my life.