My Music Trek - 1 (I hate the overused term 'journey'!) The 1960s
‘My Music Trek’ is a personal history. A lot of what follows will be boring to the stranger wandering by. But having started what I intended to be a short synopsis of my musical meanderings over the last sixty years, I found I wanted to set things down in more detail. I needed to sort out the huge pile of jumbled memories and feelings that comprise my musical past and tidy them up for future reference, before they became irretrievably mixed up, and lost. And in some ways this has given me a better perspective on events and in turn a better understanding of who I am today.
I hope you find at least some parts of the saga interesting, and maybe, if you're the same age as me, and interested in playing electric pop/rock music, you may even have had similar experiences and will have a wry smile or two when you read on. Or maybe you are one of the players in the tableau, in which case, do get in touch!
I’m aware that I never had a life plan; I don’t think many of us do, so my journey has been determined by outside influences, events and other people. I came across the poem opposite which captures this feeling well.
Like To A Ship
Like to a ship upon a shoreless ocean, Manned by an ever-growing crew of years,
My life slips onward, and with vain devotion. My soul stands silent at the helm and steers.
If one strong wind would blow direct and single, then would I turn wherever it might call,
But many winds there are, that madly mingle, and I must trim my sails to favour all.
So whether I be drifting or be sailing, I know not, and alas shall never know:
My life is one desire, unavailing, that some strong settled single wind would blow.
Robert Cameron Rogers
A Good Time to be a Teenager: I count myself lucky I was a teenager in the 1960’s. Born in 1948, I entered my teens just as the pop music phenomenon blasted off in the UK. In the words of a Conservative prime minister of the day, we 'never had it so good’ * and that certainly applied to pop music as well. Throughout the 60s, popular groups of the day (this changed to the cooler US term ‘bands’ in 1967 as I recall) used to appear in ‘package tours’; one night stands in the large variety theatres and cinemas scattered around the UK. These were the dying days of variety and touring musical shows, and nearly all these theatres became bingo halls or closed altogether a few years later. Pop package tours played two evening shows on each date; 6:00pm for the younger fans, and another at 8:30pm. Each act was expected to do only about twenty minutes, consisting of their 'hits'. Between acts, the curtains would close, to allow for amplifiers, etc. to be swapped over as quickly as possible, during which time a 'comedian of the day' (there were no comedians back then targeting teenagers) would attempt to entertain the young audience with gags and chatter, until he received a signal from the wings that the next act were ready. A very hard spot to fill! Such comperes were really used to adult audiences, and mother-in-law gags, etc. didn't go down well. The kids just wanted to see and hear the bands - now! The compere interlude also helped to built the excitement for the next group. We used to book early for any package tours announced, in order to get seats in the first three or four rows. I can still recall the thrill when the curtains swept back, the band kicked off at a good volume, and the smell of hot valves and rexine wafted off the stage! (See bottom of page for info on the famous 1967 Jimi Hendrix package tour).
The show format was always the same: about half a dozen ‘name’ acts doing short sets of about twenty minutes each, with the curtains coming down in between so that gear could be quickly swapped around (groups didn't have quite so much then), with the impatient teenage audience placated during the delay by a second division comic of the day in evening dress. There were always two ‘houses’ or shows, one at 6:30pm for the smaller fans plus their parent(s) and one at 8pm for the older teenagers. In a few short months in the mid-‘60s I went to most of the package tours that stopped near us at the Coventry Hippodrome, seeing amongst others The Who, Jimi Hendrix, The Yardbirds, Pink Floyd, The Byrds (the audience started to walk out early on their bill-topping act, not understanding their new blend of folk-rock), The Kinks, Manfred Mann, The Hollies, The Nice, Amen Corner, as well as bands not later favoured with a place in the rock pantheon such as Paul and Barry Ryan, Eire Apparent (sic) and my favourites at the time, the US all-girl group, Goldie and The Gingerbreads!
I can remember the Who gig clearly, they were top of the bill. I was in the front row and the previous bands had overrun. It was Sunday and the law stipulated that the front of stage curtain and the fire curtain behind it, must come down promptly at 10pm. The Who had only performed one song when the curtains began to come down and Pete Townsend went berserk, coming to the front of the stage and working his way along all the footlights, smashing every one with the heel of his Gibson SG before finally launching his fist at a staff ‘jobsworth’ in his brown overall who walked on stage in an attempt to stop the anarchy. We sat there dumbstruck.
What seemed like a never-ending stream of new bands assailed our young, newly-liberated teenage ears, each bringing their own take on a potent mixture of happy pop and blues. And boy was it loud! Unlike today, we could genuinely say we’d never heard anything like it before, with bands vying with each other to break new ground. Ok, the music business being what it is (and was then), there was also a flood of me-too rubbish and un-original tripe as get-rich-quick entrepreneurs rushed to cash in on the 'beat boom' which they firmly believed was a passing fad, so they wanted to make as much money from it as they could. But there’s no doubt the ‘60s gave us a plethora of truly original pop and rock music unequalled before or since. We had no idea that things would progress as they did, and how much amazing music was yet to come. And I was there.
* Harold MacMillan was mocked for saying that phrase in a speech 1957, but two years later he led the Conservativesand to a general election victory with an increased majority. In hindsight, he was right. (Everything's relative...) Britain came out of WW2 bankrupt and the 1950s were grim, but at the dawn of the technicolour 60s, things were improving rapidly.
Photo Left: Me, posing in my bedroom in 1967 with my first electric guitar a 'Hofner Galaxie' and first acoustic guitar, a Futurama? You can just see bottom left the tiny amplifier I bought with the Galaxie, which soon proved very inadequate for gigs!
Early Guitar Yearnings: My Dad had a four-string guitar that he used to play during singsongs around the fire when camping with his cousin and best friend Freddie Woods in the 1930s. Freddie was posted missing in action during WWII. He was killed in a flimsy (wooden) landing craft off the cost of Tobruk during an unsuccesful operation by Allied forces. I know this hurt Dad although he's never talked about it at any length. As a small boy I remember being allowed to see this guitar on rare occasions during visits to grandma’s where it was stored. It languished in a hard wooden case lined with what seemed to me the most beautiful red plush. The musty smell of the case mixed with the wood aroma from the guitar was divine. In the black coffin-shaped case was a strange pick, or plectrum as they used to be called, made of very hard red plush instead of today's plastic. Perhaps it was better suited to the vigorous jazz strumming popular in the 30s, when without amplification the guitar was purely a rhythm section instrument. And that’s how it started: a lifelong love affair with that fragrant crafted assemblage of wood, metal and lacquer – the guitar.
Once I became a teenager Dad thought I was responsible enough to handle his precious guitar although he wasn’t able to teach me much, having only progressed himself to a few chords in the first position. I desperately wanted to make those weird and wonderful noises that were coming from the records on the radio and echoing around in my head. At first I didn’t know that most guitars had six stings and that an electric guitar was what I really needed: and an amplifier of course. Nevertheless, after hours of work alone in my bedroom I could crank out the opening riff to Roy Orbison’s "Oh, Pretty Woman" – well, it sounded pretty close to me - and the journey had started.
Dad could see I was really keen so took me to the only music shop for miles, in Leamington Spa, run by a local dance band leader Geoff Gough, who probably thought the ‘new’ pop music was dreadful but nevertheless was making a good living from the associated country-wide guitar boom. I was fortunate enough to be a teenager at the time the whole pop music explosion happened in the UK. It’s hard to describe what a massive life-changing cultural event this was for my generation at the time; when many of us bought guitars and drums and formed bands so we could try and make the same amazing sounds we were hearing on records. It was only years later that I discovered the sheer size of this boom – almost every teenage boy in the UK was buying a guitar, working on those difficult finger-pinching chords for hours on end in his bedroom and trying to form a group, and the ramifications turned out to be immense. This whole phenomenon is affectionately and hilariously, chronicled in the book “Only 17 Watts” by Mo Foster which is a must-read. Amazon have it.
We youngsters didn’t know this at the time, but guitars from the US, along with a whole range of other consumer goods, were subject to large import duties to protect home industries following WW2 as they converted themselves back from making weapons and associated materials. For example, Triang Toys, who made small tricycles for toddlers, had been making Sten Guns during the War. So instrument imports were very few and prohibitively expensive. Cliff Richard claims to have imported the first Fender Stratocaster into the UK at great expense for use by Hank Marvin in his backing band, The Shadows. The gigantic gap between supply and demand was therefore filled by 'planks' mainly from Italian, German and Chinese manufacturers who swamped the UK with guitars ranging from the completely unplayable to the passable (some German Hofners for example). Accordingly I became the proud owner one Saturday lunchtime in 1964 of a Rossetti ‘Lucky 7’. Later that same afternoon we took it back to the shop - one of the machine heads had almost detached itself being of such poor quality. Instead I chose a second hand, no-cutaway, f-hole semi acoustic which wasn’t all that sexy but it was better made and far more playable in terms of the action and sound. It also had a pickup, but I couldn’t afford an amplifier so never heard it what it sounded like plugged in.
In a few months I’d mastered a few chords and was starting to understand my way around the fretboard. There wasn’t a wide choice of tutorial books then. In fact there were none as I recall, except ‘Play In A Day’ by Bert Weedon, a popular guitar instrumentalist of the 1950s. Bert passed away in 2012 at the ripe old age of 92 but a web site lives on here in his memory. 'Play In A Day' is still on sale having notched up sales of over 2 million! It helped me a little, but I wanted to learn how to play the hits of the day not old standards like "Whispering". But I found after a while I could listen to records and gradually figure out the chords being used, and then I discovered how the same chord patterns were used in lots of different songs. I either sold or swapped that first guitar and bought a new acoustic which was still only of 'entry level' quality. Necessity being the mother of invention I was going to sing folk music, which at the time was undergoing a big revival with the likes of Bob Dylan and Donovan. Anyway, I didn’t need an amp for folk music.
First Public Appearance: It's 1965 and I'm 17. My school, Kenilworth Grammar, is going to do a very avant-garde thing and hold an after-hours candlelit ‘Folk Evening’ – most daring! Folk and jazz music are acceptable to the older generation, i.e. parents and staff, but they would never have countenanced a ‘pop’ evening.
I team up with two pals, John ‘Ned’ Foyle and Richard Maynard and we do a spot. I don’t remember the songs or how many we did or whether the audience of 120 enjoyed it, but I certainly did! The local newspaper covers the event and there we are in our first photo spread. Besides ‘scratch’ groups comprising pupils, two guest groups appear who are a lot more proficient, including a trio called ‘Kiandra’. I remember one of their guitarists had a beautiful Gibson Hummingbird acoustic, and it's my first opportunity to see the enormous difference between a quality, professional instrument and a ‘plank’, like mine.
All these influences are becoming tattooed on my soul. I’d fallen in love with the guitar: its looks, feel, smell, and I wanted to make music with one and entertain people.
A friend of my brother's, Norman Stagles, plays bass in a local band "The Incas" and he arranges for me to see them play at a church hall in Leamington Spa. It's the first time I've been up close to a pop group hammering out amplified music and I'm completely intoxicated by it. I remember them playing the Kinks' raucous B-side "Where Have All the Good Times Gone".
I decide to go electric and answer an ad in our Kenilworth newspaper placed by a guy selling a Hofner Galaxie electric, in its own case plus a small 15 watt amp. I see him, do the deal for £20 and walk home on air with my cherished red electric, in its own case! (Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music began with a Hofner Galaxie..) By the time I get home the phone is ringing and the seller says he wants more for it. I say no. He obviously regretted letting go of his beloved Galaxie and must have had second thoughts as soon as I'd left. Here's a picture of me (40 years ago for heaven's sake..) cradling my treasured Hofner Galaxie.
So in the Summer of 1966 we form a band (pictured Left) with myself on lead guitar (seated R); Nigel Maltby, a school pal on rhythm guitar (standing R); Ned Foyle on vocals (far L) ; Laurie French on drums (standing wih sticks) and Geoff Timms on (home made) bass. We call ourselves "The ‘Trane" after John Coltrane the jazz saxophonist, emulating the Yardbirds who took their name from the sobriquet of another jazz saxophonist, Charlie Parker. Our first practices are held in the garage of Laurie's home, but we need to find somewhere more suitable and Nigel arranges for us to use his stepfather's company's industrial unit in Coventry one Sunday. It's cavernous but we set up our tiny amplifiers and start. Shortly after, the Police arrive to shut us down. A local resident had called to complain about the noise, which must have become amplified again on the outside by the nature of the building. In 1966 the type of music would have caused just as much offence to some people as the volume. We later find a village hall in Honiley where we can rehearse well away from houses.
Above: Poster and local newspaper group photo from the Jimi Hendrix UK package tour I saw at the Coventry Theatre on 19th November 1967. In the photo abve right, Hendrix & Co are in the front middle surrounded by others from the incredible bill that night. Roger Waters is bottom right, and RIck Wright is just visdible behind him. Nick Mason is over on the left. Syd Barrett is not there as I believe he was starting to have his 'wobble' during this tour and didn't turn up for this Coventry date. The Move are there, hot after three hit singles already that year; and the rest are Eire Apparent, The Outer Limits and the (eight?) members of Amen Corner, who had a hit that year with "Bend Me Shape Me". Their lead vocalist, Andy Fairweather Low is on the far right, third down. He went on to have a very successful career, continuing today, as side-man to the likes of Eric Capton, Roger Waters, The Who and many others.
It's a long time ago now, but I recall the awesome presence and power of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. They were riding high that year with 'Hey Joe' and 'Purple Haze' hit singles, and a hit album "Are You Experienced". The band's sound, and Hendrix's guitar pyrotechnics, were nothing like we'd ever heard before. It was game-changing, of course, as far as rock music was concerned. And the rest, as they say, was history.
Pink Floyd didn't go down well with the audience comprised mostly of pop fans. Their appeal at this time was limited to a few psychedelia aficionados in the London area. Contrary to popular belief, the psychedelic 60s 'movement' was pretty well confined to a smallish coterie in the capital, and Pink Floyd were not what the pop fans of Coventry, and the other venues around the un-enlightened provinces, wanted. The band decided, for some reason, to experiment with their sound, by putting their back-line amplifiers not in a row behind them - the usual configuration - but in odd positions around the stage say they stood and played in amongst the amps and cabinets. In common with most of the audience, I wasn't familiar with their oeuvre (oddly, I didn't 'get' Pink Floyd for another forty years!), so was relieved when their set ended. What a night and what a lineup, all for about £2 a ticket!
The hapless compare that night was Pete Drummond, ex-pirate station Radio London DJ. When the government closed down the offshore so-called pirate radio stations in the summer of 1967, he joined the BBC's new pop station, Radio 1, along with numerous other ex-pirate DJs, when it launched in September 1967.