26th July 2010 – OLD FRIENDS & SUNNY DAYS
It’s always good to hear from north east musicians who were active during the sixties and seventies, in particular those I played with in bands or shared the stage with back then. Since my last blog on the subject (20th February 2010), some more musos have stumbled across this site and have taken the trouble to contact me – Eddie “Poobah” Martin, Pierre Pedersen and Peter Bell.
In the mid to late sixties, Mr Poobah’s Chicago Line was a well know and popular soul band on the north east gig circuit. A few months ago their singer/guitarist, a guy I knew back then as “Eddie Poobah” got in touch and sent me some photos of the band at the Rex Hotel, Whitley Bay plus some newspaper cuttings (the photos and cuttings can be seen on the Rex Hotel and Mayfair pages and in the blog dated 24th May 2010 below). At the end of the sixties Eddie (whose actual surname is Martin) went on to front the renowned Newcastle band – the Sect. Eddie is still working as a musician both in the UK and abroad. He now sings as part of a duo as well as playing sax and guitar.
Another north east musician from the sixties still gigging is keyboard player Pierre Pedersen. I played alongside Pierre in the Newcastle band Sneeze in 1969 and 1970. After Sneeze, he worked with Keith Fisher, Tom Hill and Bob Barton in another north east band called Blondie. Pierre now lives in the south east of England where he plays keyboards in a couple of local bands.
What I remember most about Pierre, apart from his great sense of humour, was the size of his equipment; a full sized Hammond organ plus a massive Leslie cabinet. Getting that stuff into venues with a staircase wasn’t easy and it was even worse getting it out at the end of a gig after a night of drinking. Pierre tells me that he still has a Hammond and Leslie but technology has advanced and the kit now comes in easily assembled pieces which can be conveniently transported.
Pierre in one of his current bands
A couple of weeks ago I heard from Peter Bell, a vocalist who I played alongside in two bands in the sixties – James South in 1967 and the Village in1968. Before that Peter was in a couple of bands from the Stanley area – Morning Glory and the Short Blues Line.
The last time I saw Peter was in 1973 just before I moved away from the north east so it was really good to hear from him. He was a versatile singer with a good range who was great at covering blues, soul and Motown material.
Peter no longer sings in bands but now he has found out that some of his wrinkly old ex-band mates are still at it, he is reconsidering his options.
It’s not just musicians that have been in touch. A while ago I was surprised to receive an email from the lovely leggy Ronnie pictured on the right. I first met Ronnie in the summer of 1967 while I was playing regular weekend gigs with the Jazzboard at the New Cellar Club in South Shields. Not only was she very attractive but in the darkened corners of the Cellar club after a few drinks she looked just like the sixties supermodel, Twiggy.
There’s this premise that when you try to recall events from decades earlier, you only remember the things that took place on sunny days. This is definitely true in the case of Ronnie. I don’t recall much about the time we were together at the Cellar Club but I do remember one Sunday in the long hot summer of 1967 when I took Ronnie to a beauty spot near Durham City on my scooter. It was a perfect July afternoon – lots of warm sunshine and clear blue skies in the company of a very pretty, interesting eighteen year old girl. I suppose there was the anticipation (on my part at least) that we’d be spending more of the summer together.
But it didn’t happen. After that day we never saw each other again. A few days later I went to Salcombe in Devon with our keyboard player to stay with a couple of girls he knew down there. When we got back, Jazzboard was in the process of splitting up and the Cellar gigs were coming to an end. Our guitarist, who was a regular at the club told me that Ronnie had moved on and had started going out with someone he knew so I didn’t bother trying to get in touch.
So forty plus years later I’m left with some nice memories of Ronnie; a beautiful shared summer’s day at Finchdale Priory, a very short relationship without any nasty bits to spoil the memory and recollections of a mild infatuation. Plus, of course, I’ve still got the picture of Ronnie at the Cellar Club looking a bit like Twiggy.
Not long back Ronnie googled “Club a’Gogo” and found my website. I got an email from her mentioning that she, too, remembers that “lovely sunny Sunday afternoon”. The thing is that the place she recollects visiting is forty miles from where I actually took her. I guess it’s probably some other guy, and some other date that she remembers! Oh well – at least she remembers the sunshine. The good thing is that we are in touch again and are “talking” via email and Facebook.
And she still looks a lot like Twiggy.
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27th June 2010 – ALL MOD CONS
For the past 6 years I’ve been playing saxophone and keys in a mod themed tribute band called Carnaby Street. Unlike the two people who formed the band, I’m not in Carnaby Street because of any affinity to mod culture or because I’m a great fan of mod music. I started playing with them purely because it gave me the opportunity to play sax in live bands again after a long break.
That’s not to say that I don’t have some credentials. I did play in a band called the Jazzboard towards the end of the sixties mod period. And the Jazzboard were the opening act for some of the top mod bands of the day – the Who, the Small Faces and the Action.
Carnaby Street performs mainly at pubs, scooter rallies and mod events to predominantly forty-somethings – people who were part of the mod revival period of the late seventies and eighties. Most of the punters enjoy our covers of Jam, Specials, Madness songs from that period. However, the songs from the original mod era that Carnaby Street play are way out of line with the music I remember liking in the mod period of the sixties. No self respecting mod back then would have listened to some of the material we play. Only a few sixties songs in the band’s repertoire by the Small Faces and the Who come anywhere near the mark. It’s a good job that there aren’t too many original mods in our audiences.
Mod tribute band – Carnaby Street
I suppose that people who were mods in the late seventies and eighties would be in their pre-teens during the mod period of the sixties and their vision of the original mods would likely be based upon books, magazine articles and the film Quadrophenia.
I’ve read quite a few books and articles myself about the mod movement. Most of these portray the original mod era as an age of fashion and music lasting from the late fifties to the late sixties. A time where all mods cruised around on either a Lambretta or Vespa and listened to music by the Who, Kinks or the Small Faces whilst popping pills. My memory of the sixties mod thing in the north east is considerably different to anything I’ve read in recent times. This is how I remember things: -
It all started for me in the summer of 1963 when I was still at school in Sunderland and I went to visit my cousin Linda in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire – about 30 miles from central London. Linda and her two friends, Maureen and Mauveen were “mods”. They were surprised that I’d never heard the word before and that I didn’t know of any mods in the north east. They spent the next few weeks educating me. This mainly consisted of dragging me around coffee bars, clothes and shoe shops. There weren’t any shops dedicated to mod fashion. Linda and her friends just mixed and matched clothes and accessories to get the effect they wanted.
Mod girls – Maureen, Linda and Mauveen in 1963
As far as I remember they weren’t into any particular type of music. They had just started watching a new TV programme called Ready Steady Go featuring mod music but to them, mod culture was purely about fashion. I went to a few dances with them and they taught me the latest mod dance – the Shake. They talked non-stop about mod things and I felt sure that when I returned to Sunderland, after the school holidays, mods would have taken hold in the north east. I was wrong. There was something missing in the north east which gave young people in the south a head start – Ready Steady Go.
It was another year or so before Ready Steady Go was broadcast nationwide and by that time the mod movement had become front page news in the national press. It was nothing to do with fashion or music; just the bank holiday battles between mods and rockers at south coast seaside resorts. The newspaper coverage painted both the mods and rockers as vicious hoodlums whose only interests were violence and their means of transport – scooters and motor bikes, respectively. This was the first I had heard of the association between mods and scooters. Linda and her friends had not mentioned it and, anyway, I’d been riding pillion on my dad’s Lambretta since I was ten so I doubt that part of mod culture would have impressed me. By the end of 1964 and beginning of 1965 the mod “brand” had become very commercialised. High street clothing shops like Burtons were selling jackets, slacks, suits and shirts that were advertised as and could pass as mod gear. Even my little sister’s Sindy doll had a mod boyfriend called Paul, complete with blue mohair suit, a high collared shirt, knitted tie and Chelsea boots. Any new fashion fad was invariably described and advertised as being mod.
By the time I joined the Sunderland based band, Jazzboard towards the end of 1965 the label “mod” was not being used any more. It had been done to death and was dropped from the vocabulary of young trendy people. Even when the Who and Small Faces started to chart in 1966, the word mod was not universally applied to these bands or their music – at least, not back then.
Sunderland band – the Jazzboard in 1966
A certain look had become the norm for people who wanted to be fashionable. Local north east bands like the Sect, Elcort and Mr Poobahs Chicago Line all wore the latest styles, as did bands who appeared on the national club circuit, such as the Action, Shevelles, Eyes and Dawnbreakers. In the autumn of 1965, the guys in the Jazzboard wore either white jeans or hipster trousers; desert boots or Hush Puppies and coloured button down shirts with a tie. Hair was worn short, often with a centre parting. Some of the people that followed the Jazzboard had scooters and hung out at the Biz Bar, the “in-crowd” coffee bar in Park Lane, Sunderland. Drugs like purple hearts or Dexedrine were available if you wanted them.
By 1966 the mod movement was definitely on the way out in the north east. The TV programme – Ready Steady Go went with it. The decline probably happened a good few months before that in the London area and the south. The following year gave way to the rise of hippies and flower power and by 1968 the mod era was a distant memory.
Me on my Lambretta in 1966
Some of the Newcastle scooter crowd in 1968
The part of the mod movement that did linger on was the use of scooters. I bought a Lambretta as a means of transport in 1966 and kept it until 1970. Even three or four years after scooters were considered a must “mod” accessory, it was the done thing that if you had a scooter you added a crash bar, a few extra mirrors and spotlights – perhaps a union jack or two. When I first met my wife in 1968 she was part of a ‘scooter crowd’. That’s what they called themselves – not mods.
So being a north east mod for a few years in the sixties may not have been exactly like Quadrophenia but if you are old enough to have been part of it, you should have some great memories.
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24th May 2010 – SECT AND THE CITY
In the sixties there weren’t many Newcastle bands that made it to the top. After the Animals in 1964, there was a long gap of 6 years before Lindisfarne achieved chart success with their second album, ‘Fog On The Tyne’. Lots of individual musicians from the Newcastle area have found fame and fortune but famous Newcastle bands were thin on the ground.
That’s not to say that there weren’t good north east bands around in the sixties that deserved to make the big time or, indeed, tried to make a go of it. After the Junco Partners took over the Animals residency at Newcastle’s Club a’Gogo, a lot of people expected them to achieve the same success as their predecessors and be the next band from the city to hit the charts.
Then there was the Sect. Bands that make it to the top usually have more than just musical ability. They often have at least a couple of members with charisma and good looks. Back in 1964 and 1965, Newcastle band, the Sect had their fair share of both. The band built up a great reputation in the north east and had a large following of mainly female fans. They played at the best venues in the city, such as the Mayfair, Majestic, Club a’Gogo and the Quay Club. They also played at the el Cubana and Blue Note in Sunderland, the Cellar Club in South Shields plus other venues all over Northumberland and County Durham.
The Sect – left to right; Tom Duffy, Brian Short, Dave Corker, Alan Atkinson and Steve Gatiss
The original Sect was – Brian Short (vocals), Alan Atkinson (rhythm guitar), Steve Gatiss (lead guitar), Tom Duffy (bass) and Dave Corker (drums). Unlike the Junco Partners who played mainly blues based material, the Sect were a bit more mainstream. They covered music that was good to dance to and that was popular in the clubs and ballrooms. A few songs I can remember them doing were; Land Of A Thousand Dances, The Way You Do The Things You Do and It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.
The Sect got their shot at fame and fortune in 1966 when songwriter and producer Tim Rice saw the band performing in the north east. The band was invited to a recording session at the Abbey Road Studios in London by Tim Rice who, at the time, was a producer for EMI. They recorded an upbeat version of Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ and ‘Walk Away Renee’ which had been written and recorded by the American band the Left Banke a year earlier but had not charted in the UK. In the event, neither track was released by EMI.
Around about the same time, the Sect came to the attention of Ivan Birchall, the manager of the Majestic. The band had supported Unit Four Plus Two at the “Maj” and had impressed Ivan with their performance and the reaction they got from the crowd. This gig was followed by more at the Majestic supporting the likes of the Kinks, Hollies, Small Faces, Georgie Fame and many more. Ivan became the Sect’s manager and left the Rank Organisation to set up his own business in the city. The business became the Birchall Entertainments Agency – (see my blog dated 21/4/10 below).
The Sect’s closest rival in terms of local popularity was another Newcastle band, the Elcort. The Elcort, who were also aiming for national recognition, released a record on Parlaphone in 1966 – ‘Tammy’ and played several gigs at London’s Marquee club. The band was fronted by Glyn Sadler and included a couple of other well known north east musicians, Kenny Craddock (keybord) and Paul Nichols (drums). In 1967 Brian Short left the Sect to form a band called New Religion with Kenny and Paul from the Elcort. The effect of this move was that a number of bands on the books of the Birchall Entertainments Agency, including the Sect and the Elcort, disbanded or reshuffled their personnel and reformed with new identities. The new Birchall ‘A’ list bands to emerge from the melting pot were the New Religion, New Elcort, Funny Farm, Pleasure Machine and with their name unaltered but with different personnel (including Glyn Sadler from the Elcort) – the Sect.
Vocalist/saxophonist Eddie Martin with the Sect in 1972
The Sect continued to perform locally for another four or five years with the odd change in personnel. Although some individual members went on to successful careers in music, the Sect never quite made it on a national level as a band. However, they continue to be one of the best remembered bands to have performed in the north easy music scene in the sixties.
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12th May 2010 – FOR THE RECORD
Back in the early to mid sixties, the opportunities for a north east band to become known on a national level were quite limited. The usual route for a band to break into the big time was to build up a following in the north east’s clubs, pubs, ballrooms and colleges and then head off to London with a bit of a reputation and a good manager.
A Mortonsound record – the Kon Tors, an early version of the Animals
But what if you wanted to test the water first? That’s easy – you could send a recording of your band to the London record companies and impresarios, couldn’t you? Well, it wasn’t quite as easy as that in the mid sixties. For a start, there weren’t that many studios around. As for DIY jobs; the only affordable recording devices back then were unsophisticated reel-to-reel tape recorders with cheap and nasty microphones.
In the mid sixties Mortonsound in Newcastle was the place that most north east bands went to make a record. There was no fancy multitracking and normally the recording would be done in one take. You were at the mercy of the sound engineer – a guy in a white laboratory coat who, at the time, seemed at least a generation older than the band.
Discs produced at Mortonsound
So you’ve scraped a little bit of money together, bought some time at Mortonsound and have ended up with as many vinyl coated aluminium disks as you could afford. Each of the band members, the manager and the roadie want a copy for posterity so there are no disks left to promote the band. And you can’t even copy the recording and send off tape cassettes to London because cassettes weren’t available in the mid sixties. Oh well, back to the north east pubs and clubs for the time being.
Later on in the sixties a few more north east studios started to appear giving bands a bit more choice about where to record their masterpieces. There was Dave Wood’s Impulse Studio at Wallsend, Torino Sound in Sunderland (which relocated to Newcastle in 1969) and Multichord in Sunderland.
Compared with Mortonsound, these newer studios were a bit more user friendly and the owners were more approachable. You could even book rehearsal time at some of them.
For some reason, the disks that you ended up with were usually a bit disappointing and weren’t comparable to commercially produced records. They sounded a bit like your band without the bass! People like Dave Wood knew what they were doing and had good recording equipment so I guess the weakness was the way the recording was transferred to disk or the disk media itself.
The Langfords – sleeve for a recording produced at Mickey Meade’s Sunderland studio, Torino Sound in 1969
Fast forward three or four decades to today’s technology. Now with a laptop computer, audio software such as Cubase, Cakewalk or Ableton Live, an inexpensive audio interface, some decent microphones and a bit of know-how, a band or vocalist can knock out CDs with almost the same audio quality as a commercial CD.
About a year ago I came into contact with Dave Snowdon, the guitarist from one of my early bands – the Conrads from Sunderland. We hadn’t seen each other for about forty years and by coincidence we had both moved away from the north east in the early seventies. Unbeknown to us, we had lived only an hour way from each other for quite a long time. We have been corresponding by email ever since and occasionally meet up. A few months ago, for old times sake we decided to do a recording of an old sixties song. Dave recorded his vocal, guitar and bass parts at his home in Gloucestershire and sent me the tracks by email. I recorded my sax and keyboard parts at my home on separate tracks which I sent back to Dave. Dave mixed and produced the final track using Cubase. We then got together to record a video for Youtube, which we have dedicated to a couple of the Conrads guys who have passed away.
The wonders of technology! Back in the sixties you would never have believed it would be possible for unknown musicians to produce a recording with such ease and then make it available worldwide. And the quality of today’s digital DIY recordings (but not necessarily the content) is as good, if not better than the recordings made in local studios in the sixties. Just to prove the point, here’s a recording of Dave’s band the ‘Upnorth Combine’ made at Mortonsound in 1965.
Incidentally, Dave is trying to locate his former Upnorth Combine band mates so if anyone knows of their whereabouts please contact me.
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21st April 2010 – IVAN BIRCHALL R.I.P.
A few weeks ago I had the idea of including a page on Ready Steady Gone about non-musicians who were part of the sixties north east music scene; managers, promoters, agents, studio owners etc. While I was doing some research on the internet regarding these people I found out that one of the top Newcastle booking agents of the late sixties and early seventies died last year. The agent in question was Ivan Birchall who ran the Birchall Entertainment Agency. Anyone who was in a band at that time would have either known or heard of Ivan. He had most of the top local Tyneside and Wearside bands of that period on his books and also the best local venues.
Contract used by the Birchall Agency in the 60’s
Ivan Edwin Birchall was born on 5 May 1943 near Wigan. He grew up in the north west and on leaving school went to work for Pilkington Brothers the glass manufacturers in St Helens. He became involved in the entertainments industry when he went to work for the Rank Organisation in Scotland. He subsequently moved to Newcastle where he was the manager of the Majestic Ballroom. He worked with the booking agent Jack Wright in Newcastle for a while and then around 1967 started his own business, the Birchall Entertainments Agency.
Ivan’s agency in the late sixties and early seventies was situated in a small office suite in Newcastle’s Cloth Market. Ivan ran the business personally with the aid of a secretary/girl Friday called Susan. (Susan was subsequently replaced by Janice in 1970). Ivan provided lots of gigs for popular bands on his books (the ‘A’ list) such as the Sect, the Elcort, Pleasure Machine and Mr Poobah’s Chicago Line at places like the Mayfair and the Rex Hotel at Whitley Bay. He also had plenty of work for up and coming bands (the ‘B’ list) that still had to make a name. He used his top bands as a bargaining tool to get venues to accept bands from the ‘B’ list. Apparently his A list bands paid a 15% commission whereas those on the B list paid a 10% commission.
Publicity photo for the Village bearing details of the Birchall Entertainmnet Agency
Ivan was an easy person to do business with and always gave the impression that he was doing the best he could for your band. In his later years Ivan became General Secretary of The Agents’ Association of Great Britain and also Treasurer of The European Federation of Performing Arts. He lived mainly in the Champagne area of France in the small city of Sezanne, which is about an hour’s drive east of Paris.
Sadly, Ivan died in Newcastle on 21st June last year. He’ll be fondly remembered by the musicians from the sixties and seventies who know the contribution Ivan Birchall made to the north east music scene of that era.
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6th April 2010 – POSITIVE NEGATIVES
Les Gofton and Pete Watson
I recently came across a strip of negatives that hadn’t seen the light of day for over forty years. The images on the negatives were of one of my old bands, the Jazzboard, taken at the New Cellar Club, South Shields in the summer of 1967.
One of the pictures was of particular interest to me because it includes guitarist Les Gofton and bassist Pete Watson; two people with whom I lost contact in the sixties and have recently been in touch with.
Before joining the Jazzboard in 1967, Les had played in a few local bands – the Sneakers, Brave New World and the Bond. Not long before his stint with the Jazzboard, the Bond (including Les) had been the support band for one of Jimi Hendrix’s few appearances in the north east. The gig was at the New Cellar Club in South Shields on 1 February 1967.
After the Jazzboard broke up in the summer of 1967, Les joined John Miles’ old band – the Influence which included drummer Paul Thompson who later found fame in Roxy Music. He also started to play in folk clubs alongside all kinds of blues and folk musicians.
Les went on to study at Durham University and whilst he was there continued to play solo folk and blues, sharing the stage with artists such as John Martyn, Keith Christmas, Al Stewart and John Renbourn. After gaining his doctorate he began playing a regular gig once a month with some musician friends at a bar in South Shields. On one occasion (which Les describes as the highlight of his musical career) he played on the same bill as Bo Diddley.
According to Les, he didn’t perform very much once his two kids started playing music because he couldn’t stand the idea of telling them how to do it. He definitely didn’t want to play the “dad knows best” card. Les’s two kids are Pete and Lauren (Laverne) who first came to prominence in the Sunderland band Kenickie. Les says: -
“They were both naturals. Pete is a brilliant drummer as well as playing keyboards and guitar, and a fantastic producer – he’s done loads of his own stuff. Lauren of course is a wonderful writer and singer too – various top ten singles with Kenickie, two best selling albums and squillions of TV appearances – TOTP. Jooles Holland etc. She also wrote “Don’t Falter”, which she recorded with Mint Royale, and that got to number two.”
Here’s Pete Gofton’s up and coming new band – Frankie and the Heartstrings
Les, with a couple of books to his name, has spent most of his working life as an academic. Pete Watson, on the other hand, was a professional bass player from 1965 until he retired from music about ten years ago.
Pete joined a Sunderland band called the Quandowns when he was just seventeen. Following in the footsteps of the Beatles and many other British bands of that era, the Quandowns went to Germany to try and kick start their bid for fame and fortune in Hamburg night clubs. Pete returned to England in 1966 and did two periods with the Jazzboard in 1966 and 1967. Between these stints, he formed a band called the Enterprise with Nigel Olsson and Mick Grabham. After a further spell with the Quandowns, Pete played with many bands over the next few decades, including the Lea Francis Show, the Johnny Duncan band and the Federation Brewery Roadshow. He also spent time as a resident musician in the Crescendo Club at Whitley Bay and the 101 Club in Carlisle.
Pete with the Federation Brewery Road Show
Although Pete no longer plays professionally, he still keeps his hand in by playing bass at his home in Washington.
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14th March 2010 – IT WAS OUR LIFE
It’s My Life – published by Tyne Bridge Publishing
If you’ve stumbled upon Ready Steady Gone via Google and you’ve got as far as this page, there’s a strong probability that you’ve got more than just a passing interest in the north east music seen of the sixties.
If so, then I can thoroughly recommend a book that I’ve just read about Newcastle in the 60s. “It’s My Life”, published by Tyne Bridge Publishing is on sale through Amazon and other book shops. The book is a compilation of memories and stories by people who grew up in Newcastle in the sixties. There are also lots of photos, posters and newspaper cuttings from that era.
I met one of the book’s editors, Anna Flowers, last year at the launch of the North East Beat exhibition. Anna was interested in using some of the images from the Ready Steady Gone site as part of the book. In the end she did not use any of the RSG material but she has collected lots of information about important north east sixties bands including the Animals, the Junco Partners, the Gas Board, Downtown Faction, Toby Twirl, Lindisfarne plus some of the early sixties jazz bands that played at the New Orleans Club, the Downbeat and the early Club a’Gogo. Some other venues mentioned are the Dolce Vita, the Mayfair, the Oxford Galleries and the Majestic. There are anecdotes and stories from band members and managers of some of the bands mentioned above.
“It’s My Life” isn’t just about the Newcastle music scene in the sixties. There are other chapters about street life, fashion and some of the shops that were around back then – shopping places such as Marcus Price and the Handyside Arcade.
There are 192 pages of memories for those of us who were around in the swinging sixties, including the two pictures shown on the right, which were actually taken at the Club a’Gogo in 1968. At £10 it’s a real bargain.
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20th February 2010 – FRIENDS REUNITED
After moving away from the North East in 1973 I gradually lost contact with the people I played alongside in bands in the late sixties and early seventies. Now, thanks to Ready Steady Gone, a lot of my old friends have contacted me and we are back in touch again.
I’ve also heard from a lot of people who were in or connected with North east bands at the same time as me in the sixties; some I knew at the time and some I didn’t.
Here are some of the people that have contacted me over the past year or so: -
Brian Short, vocalist with the Sect, got in touch a while ago regarding the old Cellar Club in South Shields. As well as sending me some pictures of that venue (which can be seen on the ‘Cellar, South Shields’ page), Brian sent me this picture of the Sect from around 1966.
(l to r) Steve Gatiss – lead guitar, Tom Duffy – bass, Brian Short – lead vocals, Alan Atkinson – rhythm guitar and Dave Corker – drums.
The Sect was one of the top Newcastle bands during the mid to late sixties with a huge fan base. I still remember their excellent version of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”.
Nick Thorburn, the guitarist with Toby Twirl contacted me recently after seeing a link to Ready Steady Gone on the Vintage Sixties Live web site. Nick and I used to work together at the MPNI, Longbenton in 1966. I was playing in the Jazzboard at the time and he was with a band called Shades of Blue, later to become Toby Twirl who were subsequently signed by Decca. In 1966 Nick embarked on a career as a professional musician which lasted until 1984.
Toby Twirl with Nick – second right
More recently I was contacted by an ex-north east drummer called Dougie Vickers who now lives in Devon. Dougie is a veteran from the golden days of the Club A’Gogo, Newcastle and played in a band called the Invaders who, alongside the Animals were resident at the Gogo in 1963 and 1964. Here’s a picture of Dougie with the Invaders in 1963 – (there’s more on the Club A’Gogo page).
Dougie with the Invaders
Some non-musicians who have been in touch are – Eric Punshon who ran the el Cubana and La Cubana clubs in Sunderland; Dave Wood, proprietor of Impulse Studios in Wallsend and Colin Hart, ex-tour manager with the legendary rock band Deep Purple. Colin (pictured) now lives in Orlando, Florida and works in the Greg Rike Productions Studio. He started his musical career as a roadie, driving an old ambulance for the Jazzboard in 1967. He then went on to work as a roadie for Toby Twirl, Vanity Fare before touring in the USA and securing the gig with Deep Purple.
Finally, the most surprising email I received took me way back to my schooldays in 1962 when I was learning to play the sax. At that time I was listening to my dad’s collection of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey records and I was convinced my future was as part of a saxophone section in a big band. Dance orchestras, such as Joe Loss, David Rose, Frank Chacksfield and Mantovani were still quite popular in the early sixties and even charted from time to time. A group of school friends and I got the chance to play for ten minutes at a dance in South Hylton near Sunderland while the proper band were taking their break. We had a couple of saxes in our line up and opted to play “Must Be Madison” by Joe Loss and a few similar tunes. The band appearing that night were Paul Ryan and the Streaks, the first rock band I’d ever heard playing live music. What’s more, they had a terrific tenor sax player called Bernie. The combination of Bernie’s playing and the sound of the amplified sax made me revise my plans to join a dance band. From the first moment I heard Bernie I knew I wanted to play in rock bands and began practicing non-stop so I could be as good as him. Not too long after I began playing in local rock bands.
Bernie at the el Cubana in 1962
A few weeks ago I got an email from the very man who changed my musical direction back in 1963 – Bernie Walsh. It was great to hear from him and the good thing is that he has sent me lots of material from the days when he was with the Streaks (see the Early Stuff page).
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6th September 2009 – WHO KILLED JIMI HENDRIX?
Many people have tried to piece together the events in Jimi Hendrix’s life on 17th September and the early hours of 18th September 1970, the period leading up to the discovery of his body in a London hotel room. Officially, his death was an accident, the result of him choking on his own vomit following a night of partying.
Quite recently the whole can of worms has been reopened and several reports have appeared in the media about whether or not Hendrix was murdered. The two articles I have read were in the Daily Mail on 18 June 2009 and in the August edition of Classic Rock Magazine .
So why has the subject of Jimi’s death been revived yet again? Quite simply because Jimi’s ex-roadie, James ‘Tappy’ Wright has published his autobiography in which he suggests that Jimi was, in fact, murdered by his manager, Mike Jeffery. Tappy Wright claims that Jeffery told him in 1973 that had been involved in the killing of Jimi Hendrix. The motive being that Jeffery stood to gain a lot of money if Jimi was dead. Jeffery, who was the owner of Newcastle’s Club a’GoGo, died in a plane crash a few weeks later, so unless anyone else confesses to being an accomplice in the murder, the truth of that fateful night is unlikely to ever emerge.
The contraversial ‘confession’ featured in the book will no doubt contribute to the sales figures. Some people have even suggested that the admission by Jeffery is pure fiction designed to sell copies. I haven’t read the book yet but because of the north east connections it should make interesting reading regardless of the murder allegation. I’ll be ordering my copy from Amazon shortly.
James 'Tappy' Wright
As far as I can remember Ivan Birchall’s empire remained in tact and Tappy moved on to pastures new elsewhere.
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17th JUNE 2009 – SEX, DRUGS & ROCK ‘N ROLL
There’s lots of it in Geoff Docherty’s account of his life as a promoter in the late sixties and seventies. And quite a bit of violence chucked in too.
When I visited the North East Beat exhibition last month (see the blog below), I saw ‘A Promoter’s Tale’ on sale at the Discovery museum shop. I knew about the book when it was first published about 7 years ago but I didn’t think I would like it so never bothered buying it.
I was playing in Newcastle bands at the same time that Geoff was around and we knew the same people – Nigel Olsson and Mick Grabham, for instance. But our paths apparently never crossed back then and although I played at the Bay Hotel, one of Geoff’s early venues, I can’t remember ever meeting him.
Anyway, while I was up in the North East last month, my sister loaned me her copy of ‘A Promoter’s Tale’. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down and actually finished it in two sittings. It’s a fascinating account of Geoff Docherty’s achievements of bringing top bands to Sunderland and Newcastle at prices the average punter could afford. Geoff gives some graphic accounts of his encounters with some of the hard cases he had to deal with while he was establishing himself as a promoter. What did surprise me is that he is very modest about his skills in negotiating the appearance of bands like the Who, Free, Led Zeppelin and Country Joe at his venues.
The book itself is another great achievement by Geoff and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in the North East music scene of the sixties and seventies. I’m even going to buy my own copy after I return the one I read to my sister.
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24th MAY 2009 – NORTH EAST BEAT
View of the Sage, Gateshead from Newcastle’s quay side
I don’t get back to the North East very often but when I got an invite to the launch party for North East Beat I just had to go.
North East Beat is a new exhibition at Newcastle’s Discovery Museum exploring the North East music scene from the fifties to date. The exhibition’s organiser, Kylea Little asked me a few months ago if she could use some material from this site – hence my invitation to attend the event on 19th May.
I knew that the Junco Partners and the Cornshed Sisters would be appearing. Apart from that, I wasn’t sure what else to expect or who else would be attending. It turned out to be a couple of hours well spent. The exhibition itself is well put together with material covering six decades. Exhibits include photographs, posters, cuttings, concert tickets, clothing, videos and a jukebox featuring records by North East bands. There’s information on most of the North East’s well known bands and musicians from the Animals to the Tygers of Pan Tang.
The Juncos at the launch party
I didn’t spot any ‘A’ list musical celebs – such as Sting, Bryan Ferry, Eric Burden or the like but there were a few well known faces present; Ray Laidlaw (Lindisfarne), Marie Nixon (Kenickie), Geoff Docherty the promoter and probably a few more I didn’t see. I was pleasantly surprised to see my name up on the list of contributors with, amongst others, Brian Bennett the drummer with the legendary Shadows.
Entrance to the exhibition
List of contributors
While I was in the North East I got to a couple of music venues. The first was to see the blues band – the Alligators at Egypt Cottage, City Road, Newcastle on the same night as the North East Beat launch party. Consequently, I only caught the second set from the Alligators but it was a set well worth seeing. The pub was crammed and had a fantastic atmosphere. I’m told that the band have been together for a long time and this certainly showed in their dynamic performance. I’m reliably informed that Brian Eno was in the crowd, propping up the bar and listening to the band.
I had a couple of good years in the sixties playing in the same band as Bruce, the Alligator’s harmonica player. When I met him a few days after the gig, he told me that I’d missed the best set. Perhaps I had but I was still very impressed with the set I saw.
On Saturday 23 May I saw Raw Spirit at the Magnesia Bank in North Shields. My reason for going to see Raw Spirit was that the trumpet player is Jimmy Hall who I played with in various bands over a five year period in the sixties and seventies. The Magnesia Bank is an excellent music venue with a good atmosphere and a crowd who really like their music. Raw Spirit played mostly blues numbers with a couple of soul classics thrown into the mix to a very appreciative audience. There were some great solos from saxophonist John Hall throughout the evening.
Raw Spirit at the Magnesia Bank, North Shields
All in all it was an enjoyable trip to the North East and well worth the 600 mile round trip. I’ll certainly try and catch Raw Sprit and the Alligators next time I’m in the area.