 
## JOHNNY MORRIS

## and the

## CONVERTIBLES

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ISBN: 9781301834891

Published by Terry Aspinall Smashwords Edition

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© Copyright 2003 by Terry Aspinall
Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Other Books by this Author
Dedication

To the many friends I have made in the music industry over the past 50 years. They are numbered in there hundreds and this list is still steadily growing as we all embrace the internet, and pass around stories of actual events so that the public may learn and enjoy what we and others like us got up to.
Introduction

This story is fiction, however it is based on a collection of events that actual happened to me or some of my musician friends during my 50 years in the music industry.

The story takes you back to the late 1950's and through to the swinging sixties, when the musical world suddenly awoke to the sounds of a new musical revolution that was emerging from all parts of England. Johnny Morris and the Convertibles were part of that revolution that took them on one hell of a wild ride, as they slowly made their way to the top of their profession. While enjoying the brighter side of life along the way, they often fell victim to the darker side, that lay in wait, and in the end, it became their undoing.

This is a personal account of how Johnny Morris remembers his rise and fall.

I would also like to apologise in advance for any mistakes that you might find as I rely heavily on the so called latest modern spell checker.
Chapter 1

## THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

Sitting up in my hospital bed, I opened my very old, tattered looking photograph album that had long since seen better days. I was trying desperately to recollect earlier events that had shaped and created my life. During the time when most of the photos had been taken, the people and events captured within each snap shot looked so realistic. They seemed to come alive and jump out at you, as you turned each page. In most cases no explanation was needed to the browser of the album, as to what dramatic moment had been captured on film. Each photo looked so real and modern to any viewer, even though they had been captured many years earlier. Unlike the old brown discoloured photos that my parents had clung onto, depicting their early family events that had taken place long before I was born.

However, a few years have since passed and now as I look through the album, all of my photos have somehow become faded and discoloured, so that they now look exactly like my parent's old photo album. The subjects I had captured on film now seem to look like stone statues standing in artificial poses that have no meaning whatsoever to the casual onlooker. Although, to me they are still very real and each recalls events that showers me with every minute detail of the event in question.

I turned each page very slowly, trying to digest every crumb of information that lay before me. While at the same time I was very careful not to damage them further. The photographic experience was helping me recall the events in my life that recorded me chasing a dream for many years, and confirming that it had not been a figment of my imagination.

We all go to the cinema and watch the television, and whatever scene we are watching, it is usually enhanced and comes alive to the sound of music. Not only are our eyes witnessing the event on screen, but our ears are also being treated to a musical extravaganza that is designed to dramatically assist and enhance each scene. Unfortunately and sadly, in real life this does not normally happen. When we have a romantic moment there are no angels flying around our heads plucking harps in the background while singing melodically in our ears. Or if something has gone wrong or there is a disaster affecting our lives, there are no heavy orchestral masterpieces sounding in the distance. At least that is how I perceive life. Therefore, over the years, I learnt to create my own music deep within my head to suit the situation. Whenever something happened to me, I would conjure up some sort of musical theme to go along with the experience. Over the years, I turned it into an art form, and I must admit that it brought me through many problems in my life, as well as providing me with a wealth of ideas for songs and stories that I later found myself writing.

We had all been very young and reckless during those early years, setting a fast pace of life for others who wished to follow in our footsteps. In trying to reach our goals, we had set the world on a complete new path and direction, something that our grandparents would not have liked or agreed with. However, now that we have become the older generation, it is us that have to sit back and watch, as another younger generation take up the challenge, and start to create their version of history just like we did all those years ago, while all we can do is mob and criticise them, just like our parents did to us.

I could not help pausing at a page near the beginning of the album, as my eyes became focused on an old brown and white photo of my Mother Alice, who was sitting very stately like upon a stool by her beloved upright piano. This particular pose had stayed with me over the years, and was how I had always remembered her. Her hands were not on the keyboard but folded neatly in her lap, while she was sitting in a very rigid upright pose for the camera. This was a shame because she had been an excellent player and teacher, having taught most of the children in the area during the years I had spent at school.

The more I looked at the photo the more it seemed to come alive, as I imagined her turning and swinging her legs under the keyboard. She then proceeded to tickle the ivories, as I called it, and to play her favourite tune the "White Cliffs of Dover". She loved that song, and played it constantly during those early years, I guess it remind her of her loving husband Barry who had not returned from the Second World War.

As I had never met my Father I always associated this song with him, as it had a war connection and besides it was the very first tune that I could ever remember. Therefore, whenever I heard it being played, I would have to wipe a small tear from my cheek, as I tried to imagine how it would have been if we had grown up together.

My Mother was a beautiful woman with long, flowing auburn hair that was usually covered by a brightly coloured silk headscarf, as was the fashion for working class Mothers in those days. Her slender body always gave her an appearance of a young film star, and I can still remember the men folk of her age all giving her a second glance as we walked past, while some used to whistle at her once we were in the distance. I had learnt to copy them, so that I could whistle back some sort of reply. However, Mother hated that and would always be telling me off, by saying that it only encouraged them and drew further attention to us.

For some unknown reason she had never taken another husband. I guess she wanted to remain true to the only person she had ever really loved. To prove this she would constantly be telling me stories about my Father, and of what a nice person he had been. Unfortunately, it was left to my imagination to work out how we would have got on together.

However, it was not for the lack of chasing admirers, because we lived near an American Air Force base, and there were always many servicemen walking around the town at any one time while on leave. For some reason she chose not to take up the many offers that she must have had during those early years. Upon reflection, I can only remember her ever bringing home a couple. I guess it never worked out for her. What I do remember is the struggle that she went through in order to provide for us over the years. She would take any job that was available to her, which was usually shop assistant work.

In the late forties, we moved to the suburb of Combs Wood and into what was known as a small prefabricated house, it being a low set building that was specially constructed very cheaply to house the local people just after the war. They had been designed to last for only ten years, when in actual fact most of them stood for nearly forty.

As I continued to turn the pages of the album, my Mother returned to her statue-like pose by the piano, as "The White Cliffs of Dover" slowly faded into the background. My eyes scanned the next page and settled onto a photo of myself sitting amongst a group of young school friends by the town's swimming pool. What stood out to me more than anything was how sun tanned I looked and even at that age, I was already developing into a muscular lad. Suddenly I could hear Elvis Presley singing "Heartbreak Hotel". "Well since my baby left me", how could I ever forget those words? Therefore, I immediately knew that the photo had been taken in late May 1956, and that I would have been only thirteen years old at the time. This was the very first time that I ever heard Elvis sing, and to what later became known as Rock n Roll music. The people in the photo all started to come alive as the song in my head progressed.

In the background of the photo were two girls sitting on the rough wooden seats that were built around the viewing area of the swimming pool, while in between them sat the very first small portable radio that most of us had ever seen. However, it was the music that came out of its speaker that grabbed our imaginations, sounding unlike anything we had ever heard before. For some unknown reason we could not contain ourselves and we all launched into some sort of jitterbug frenzy, trying to dance to it by the side of the pool. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but it sure as hell felt good.

Until that day, not only did I not know what Elvis sounded like, but also I had no idea as to what he looked like. However, that was soon to change as one of the girls, known as Maureen, handed me a magazine with a coloured picture on its cover of the man himself. The first thing that caught my eye was the bright colour of his shirt, it being deep claret red. My attention was then grabbed by his hairstyle and to the way that it was plastered down on his head, by what looked like some sort of grease. Maureen, who was a few years older than me, told me to open the magazine, so that I could see a small article on the man himself inside.

Late that afternoon, as most of the public were leaving the pool, I walked over to where we had all been sitting to look for my towel, not wanting to return home without it, as my Mother would have given me a good talking to for losing it. Sure enough, there was my towel and lying right beside it was the magazine that Maureen had let me read. After looking around to see if I was being watched, I picked it up, wrapped it in my towel, and beat a hasty retreat before she came back to retrieve her precious magazine.

At home, I spent hours and hours just looking at the picture of Elvis, while wondering what it would be like to be on stage, and to be able to sing just like him, while besieged by hundreds of screaming girl fans. Then while standing in front of our very small bathroom medicine cabinet mirror, I tried to pout my lips in order that I could look just like him. I then tried to sing the only words of the song that I could remember at that time, "Down at the end of lonely street". I must have found over one hundred different ways of trying to sing those words, while prancing around the bathroom. I've often wondered what Mother thought was happening in the bathroom at that time. Because up until then, she would have to threaten me with physical violence just to get me inside the room, let alone get me in the bath, and now she could not get me out of the place.

I even tried to get my hair to look the same as Elvis. Not having any Brylcream, the normal hair-grooming grease that was available in those days, I borrowed some Vaseline from the medicine cabinet. Having applied the grease to my hair, I then spent several hours trying to make it look just like Elvis. In the end, I kidded myself that I had found a way of getting it to look as near as possible to the man. However, there was a down side to my experiments, the greasy black stains that mysteriously appeared on my bedroom pillow, after sleeping on it for a couple of nights. Not to mention my Mother's constant nagging, wanting to know why all the Vaseline had suddenly disappeared from the cabinet. I hoped she didn't think that I was using it for something else. Deep inside I knew that she was aware of where it had gone, so I tried to make a joke of it by telling her that I could not scrape it off the pillow and replace it back in the container. She must have forgiven me because, on her very next shopping excursion, she bought me a small jar of Brylcream and a brand new plastic hair comb, while I bought myself a small scrapbook and glued the colour picture of Elvis on the very first page. As far as I was concerned, he was my number one idol and I was his number one fan. I'm sure if I had known how, I would have built a shrine and prayed to him almost every day.

In order that I could accompany myself singing, I started tapping a beat on a small cardboard box that I found in my bedroom toy cupboard, while imagining I was a drummer. At times, I got quite good, or at least I thought so, and progressed into playing along with any tune that came on the radio. I guess I must be one of the only guys who accompanied classical music on cardboard boxes. I could already hear the announcer in my head; "And now, at great public expense to the tune of a refundable cardboard box, I introduce to you all, the melodic tapping of Mr Thumper Tune".

At a later date I returned to the swimming pool hoping to see Maureen and Patty, as I wanted to ask what station they had been listening to. I had spent time scanning the channels of my Mother's radio, but all I could find were the BBC Radio bands. At that time there were only three of them. The Home Service that was strictly for people who wanted to listen to current affairs and debates. Then there was what was known as the Third Program that was for the highbrow upper-class people and it only played Classical and Orchestral stuff. For people like myself there was the Light Program, that played what was known as light music of the day, and consisted of a few ballads that had been around for a couple of years and were constantly being repeated, songs that were sung by local artists like Dickey Valentine, Anne Shelton and Vera Lynn, while from America there were Frankie Lane, Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney.

On Sundays, at midday, there was a program called Family Favourites that was produced especially for the British servicemen and their families. The servicemen were usually based in Germany, Cyprus, Aden and Singapore, while their families were holding the fort back in the United Kingdom. Messages of goodwill were passed on to each other, and culminated in a request for a record for their loved ones. Mostly these requests consisted of some sort of orchestral masterpiece, but occasionally a more modern piece of music was requested. One of the more favoured ones at that time was by Pat Boone, an American artist singing "I'll Be Home". I guess the title says it all for the servicemen to their families, and so this song was usually played at least once a month. Unfortunately, it was a ballad type of song, and so it was not really what I wanted to hear. To me it was what I called a wishy washy sort of song because it had no go in it. It was music that made you go to sleep and what I wanted to listen to made you want to jump up and dance. However, it was a change from the usual type of rubbishy music that was usually played on the program. Therefore, I guess the establishment was gradually changing their boring ways in order that they might retain a younger audience.

We had no record player but, even if we had, the records of the time known as 78s because they ran at 78 rpm (revolutions per minute) were all designed to attract the older generation, as they were the ones with the money. However, this was all about to change, and in doing so, it would ruffle a few feathers of the so called established music moguls in the country. It was also impossible to obtain American records in the United Kingdom, which was why we had to rely on what became known as substandard English versions of the original American hits. The Musician's Union of that time had a stranglehold on what the radio stations were allowed to play, and to what proportion of overseas musical content was allowed to be slotted in between the local live and recorded music.

Maureen informed me that she listened to a Dutch radio station known as Hilversham, and that at certain times of the day they had special programs that played the latest music coming out of America. It did not matter that you could not understand the announcer as he talked in between tracks, because Elvis sounds the same in any language. Anyway, once the record started to play there was no mistaking who it was.

Back at home I spent a lot of time fiddling with the radio while trying to find Radio Hilversham, not really knowing where it actually was. The wave band number that Maureen had given me did not seem to be playing music that I wanted to hear. It was only after several attempts that I realised that the music I craved for was not played all the time, it was only on the odd occasion that you would hear it.

However, after a couple of days I convinced myself that I had found it, but this lead to two problems. One was that I had to sit through many hours of music that I hated and did not want to hear, in order to be listening when Elvis finally came on. The second problem was that the radio reception was poor, and during the day the station kept fading badly. Therefore, I decided to do something about it, by attaching a piece of wire to the radio aerial connection on the back of the radio and threading the other end through a hole in the glass window by the radio. I then climbed up the side of the house and attached the other end of the wire to the metal rainwater guttering. It did not solve the problem completely but it did improve the reception to an acceptable level. It was strange but I worked out that the signal to the radio always seemed to be much stronger in the evenings, and became stronger as we progressed into the night, although I never did know why.

Turning another page of the album, the sounds of "Heartbreak Hotel" suddenly started to fade into the background, as I found myself looking at a coloured portrait of myself. I was dressed in a bright blue and black striped shirt with my collar turned up, and was wearing a pair of black tight legged trousers with fourteen inch bottoms that became known as Drainpipes, trying my utter most to look like Elvis. However, what stood out was the fact that I had a guitar hanging from my neck, and an artificial trick cigarette which I had taken from the Christmas tree the year before, hanging from the corner of my lips. My left hand was around the neck of the guitar while my right hand looks like it is plucking the strings although I doubt it. My head was suddenly filled with the sounds of Elvis singing "Blue Suede Shoes", another one of his hits that came out a little later that same year. At that time, it seemed like every record that he brought out was destined to be a big hit.

Even though I credit my Mother with successfully teaching most of the children in our area how to play the piano, I was to be her one and only failure. I was the only person that she finally gave up trying to teach. Even after she took the time to write the actual notes in pencil on every single white key, it still did not help me. I do not know what the problem was, but for some reason I could not get a grasp what she was trying to explain to me. Mind you, my heart was not in it and I hated the hours and hours of constant practice, going up and down the so called scales, to me it was so boring. Knowing that it was my Mother teaching me I guess I knew that I could get away with not practising, and so I finally gave it up altogether. At that time most of the other children were all forced into keeping up the lessons because their parents had paid a lot of money for them to learn. Somehow, it was just not me; although with that wonderful tool known as hindsight, if she had taught me how to play Rock and Roll then I think I would have picked it up overnight. In those days the keyboard to me was not a swinging instrument or sex symbol, so who wanted to play it? Mind you, at that time I had not heard of artists like Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard, otherwise I'm sure things might have turned out very different for me.

However, when it came to the guitar that was different, because most of the latest up and coming stars of that time were all playing them, and anyway if I was going to emulate Elvis it was a necessity. I became very frustrated with my Mother's constant answers, I was always pleading with her to buy me one. Unfortunately, she was having nothing to do with it, and kept reminding me at every opportunity that it would simply be a waste of money, as the guitar was just a passing craze and that it would be dead within a couple of years.

However, my persistence paid off big time, when she finally cracked under the strain. I persuaded her to take me to the nearby town of Ipswich by double-decker bus so that I could purchase a guitar with some money that I had managed to save from a morning newspaper delivery round that I had been involved in for a couple of years. She also agreed to give me a little extra as an early Christmas present, if I helped her around the house for the next six months. Now that was a good trade off and I grabbed it with both hands, knowing that I would be able to twist her around my little finger and get out of any future house chores.

We sat upstairs on the bus and, as there were not many other people around us, I sang to her as we drove along, while accompanying myself by tapping on the back of the seat in front of me. However, halfway through the song I had to refrain from tapping the seat, because I created a thick cloud of dust that came out of the upholstery, which also made my hands very dirty. "Singing the Blues" was her favourite hit song at that time, by the new rising English singing sensation, Tommy Steele, who just happened to play a guitar. It was another English version of an American hit record, by Guy Mitchell. Anyway, I gave her a good ten-minute version, throwing in every ounce of feeling I could muster, and loved every minute of it. Instead of being embarrassed, my Mother enjoyed what I had just sung for her and that made me very happy. If others did not like what I was doing, to heck with them my Mother did and that was fine by me. Anyway, I had just sung her favourite song and in doing so, I had also produced the finest performance of my life so far, and so I had good reason to be proud.

As we walked into the music shop, I felt like I had arrived in Aladdin's cave, because there was six beautiful guitars all hanging along one of the walls by the counter. It was only then that I suddenly realised that I did not have a clue what to ask for. I had always imagined that there would only be one type of guitar in the shop, and so I would not have to make a choice. I imagined that I would be saying to the sales staff, "I'll take that one over there, pack it up and I'll be on my way". Suddenly things were not quite as clear cut as I had expected. I had walked into a completely different ball game, and I could sense that I was somehow getting out of my depth. Having convinced my Mother to take me to the shop, because I knew what I was doing, here I was lost for words, not knowing what to ask for or what to say to the sales staff.

As it turned out, my choices were severely restricted anyway and cut down drastically by the fact that I only had £5-10 shillings in my pocket, and that there was only one guitar in the shop around that price range, a steel-stringed acoustic one. To me, somehow it looked smaller than the other ones alongside it. When I pointed this out to the sales lady, she told me it was a three-quarter one, whatever that meant. It also looked different to the other ones, as its wooden body was very light in colour, unlike the other ones, which were all stained in dark browns. It even felt lighter as if it was made from orange box material, but who was I to complain. I wanted a guitar and here was one that I could afford. I'm sure Elvis never had these problems, and anyway in the end they all sound the same, don't they?

Once I had agreed with the sales lady that it was the one I wanted, the lady threw in a soft material carry case for me, and I felt over the moon that I had got something for nothing out of the deal. Next, she offered to get it tuned up for me by one of the experts out the back of the shop. I did not have a clue what she was talking about, but I went along with her suggestion, as she knew more about these things than I did, and as for Mum, well, she just came along for the bus ride so she could look out the window.

After tuning it up, the so-called expert came to see me and asked if I had ever owned a guitar. Before I answered, I looked around the shop, noticing that a few people were looking at me and listening to the conversation. Not being one who makes a habit of lying, but being a little embarrassed, I had to admit in front of all the other customers in the shop that I had not. The atmosphere suddenly changed, after they realised that I was not some hotshot expert who could play one of these things, and most of the people walked away. The expert then showed me how to play the chord of G, although at the time I did not have a clue what he was showing me for. I was under the impression that your left hand only held the weight of the neck, and that your right hand just thrashed away on the strings over the hole in the middle of the body. The rest was down to how you snarled your lip and wiggled your hip.

The ride home on the bus turned out to be one of the longest journeys I think I ever experienced on public transport. I had the guitar propped upright in its own seat beside me, and my arm around it as if it were my new girlfriend. I could not wait to get it home and to start playing "Blue Suede Shoes," because I had already learnt all of the words to the song. I had finally been able to purchase my very first guitar; there was no way that I was going to be parted from it now. I even gave it a girl's name. I called it Liz, after a girl at school who I had been chasing unsuccessfully for some time. The shape of it seemed to remind me of Elizabeth's body shape. Therefore, as you can imagine I was glad that I was not learning how to play the double bass. However, there was a girl in my class that I could have named it after. Lucky for me I had not wasted any of my time chasing big Bertha.

Once home I ran upstairs and put on my blue and black striped shirt, smeared a little Brylcream on my hair and shook the guitar out of the bag. Within seconds, I found myself standing in front of the small mirror in the bathroom once again. However, my rendition of "Blue Suede Shoes" did not sound quite as good as the version I had heard on the radio. Although I was more than happy with my singing, it was the sounds that came from the guitar that seemed to spoil the whole song. It set me back in utter disappointment, after all I was expecting everything to sound perfect, and note for note exactly like the record. It took me several days to get over the bitter disappointment I had experienced after strumming my very first guitar.

Somehow, I kidded myself that Elvis must have gone through the same sort of disappointment when his Mother purchased his very first guitar. If that were the case, then I had to place this major setback to my ego behind me, and work on improving it. After all, Elvis never gave up. He must have picked himself up and just got on with life, while picking up tips along the way as he learnt to play the guitar. Although that could be a problem, as I knew of nobody who knew anything about a guitar.

As another page of the photo album was flicked over, the sound of "Blue Suede Shoes" began to die in the back of my head, as a fast guitar strumming Lonnie Donegan singing "Cumberland Gap" replaced it. I found myself looking at a brown discoloured looking photo of three scruffy looking schoolboys that was taken in early 1957.

My Mother had taken this photo of my very first pop group, showing me with my acoustic guitar once again hung around my neck, while alongside me is my school friend Steve Johnson holding his very nice looking, dark-brown stained acoustic nylon strung guitar, which had obviously cost a lot more money than mine. However, just like me, he could not play his either. Somehow, we had both managed to get as far as we had, by playing the one and only chord that I had been shown at the shop. Unfortunately, for me, during my bus journey ride home, I had forgotten the correct fingering of the strings on the guitar neck, and so we were both playing it all wrong. However, it did seem to fit in nicely to the tune of "Cumberland Gap", a song that I later learnt, and lucky for me, was based around the chord of G. However, we used to play the whole song in the same chord with no changes. Unfortunately, we were also playing a chord of G-7th. For some reason our untrained ears had not picked up a problem, and we both thought we were just great. Even if we had known another chord, I don't think we would have been able to play it, as we both experienced great difficulties in trying to press the strings down onto the neck behind a fret. For some reason the strings seemed to be positioned at least an inch above the neck. Many times we both experienced bloody fingers during practice session, in our efforts to hold down the chord successfully although my fingers were usually worse as Steve's strings were made of nylon while mine were of steel. It was also noted that the Lonnie Donegan song while only using one chord, meant to us that all other songs were also played the very same way. This is why we never bothered to learn another chord. Why bother we thought, we would just play and sing everything in G; at least it made sense to us.

The third member in the photo was my neighbour and good friend Colin Peters, and he is holding a mouth organ, something that he could at least get a tune out of, even if it was only "Nelly Dean". He had been a great fan of Larry Adler, the famous harmonica player, having heard him many times on the radio. Although when we accompanied him we always thought that he was playing the wrong notes and were constantly telling him off, it never entered our heads that we were the culprits.

As it was my group I had insisted that I chose the name, and wanting to be the star I had talked them into accepting 'The Johnny Viper Trio'. I chose Johnny because to me all the new stars that were emerging from the English music scene in those days were using it. Lloyd Price from America had even brought out a song titled "I'm Gonna Get Married" and it contained the line "Johnny you're too young"; somehow it had a ring to it, and had stuck in the back of my mind. I liked the word Viper, because it was the name of a Skiffle group based in London. The viper is a snake and at one time, I had toyed with the word adder, which is another name for the viper. Somehow "Johnny and the Adders" would not have sounded quite right. Maybe in today's society 'Johnny and the Calculators' would have worked, but not in those days, after all nobody knew what a calculator was.

In those days, I was a very persuasive and persistent type of person, as well as being dominant and forceful at times, used to getting my own way even if it hurt those around me at the time. In this way, I was always able to force Steve and Colin into playing whatever songs I wanted, and to doing it my way. However, there were times when I had to concur with their ideas because I was not the best musician around, and at times they actually knew a little more about it than I did. During those times, I would manage to turn everything around so that it looked like it had been my idea in the first place. I can even remember winning a vote that was taken, even though it ended up being a two to one result against me. I was always winding people up, and once I had them hooked, I would delight in laughing at them, telling them that as they had taken the bait I was only reeling them in.

In hindsight, I guess you could say that it all came about through me growing up without a Father figure in my life and a very kind Mother who although struggling to feed us, did not want me to go without. Others have described me as being spoilt and a bit of a bully during those early days at school. I like to look at it another way, that I only stood up for myself. There was no way that I was going to let others push me around, even if there were more than one of them. Over the years this worked in my favour, as most people thought twice before they picked on me. If ever I was beat to the ground and covered in blood, somehow I would manage to get to my feet and then throw the very last punch, nobody was ever going to beat me and they knew it. This ensured that the friends I attracted around me knew the stakes, and never disagreed with whatever I suggested. There were also those who chose to befriend me in an effort to use my reputation as protection from their enemies, but it did not worry me. Mind you, where Colin and Steve were concerned we were all good mates and I would have gone to the ends of the world rather than lose their friendship. Nobody and I mean nobody came between us, and we all watched each other's backs.

Looking at an old black and white photo of the Secondary Modern School, with all of my fellow students lined up in rows across the playground, I was reminded of an incident that somehow became folk law amongst the pupils of that era. It all started off very innocently, when one of the teachers, a Mr Trowel, accused me of something that I had nothing to do with. Because I was innocent there was no way that I was going to accept the punishment that he ordered upon me. I remember as if it was yesterday, that I did not speak to him using bad language or by being flippant. All I did was try to explain that he had accused the wrong person and so there was no way that I was going to allow him to cane me, for something I had not done His favourite weapon at that time was a thin strip of wire inserted rubber that he championed upon many boys in the school for any minor misdemeanour that he accused them of committing. School children of the day were never believed and had no rights, whatever the teachers accused you of doing, you were guilty and it was no good trying to tell them different. An old saying of the time was "Little boys should be seen but not heard". You weren't even allowed to cry when they caned you. Between each stroke of the cane if you cried out the teacher would order you to stop crying. Otherwise he would administer more strokes of punishment, which he did anyway in order that you received the correct amount that he had originally awarded you. This always made me believe that there were not many rocket scientists as schoolteachers. How the hell can you get somebody to stop crying if you keep hitting him? Anyway because of my constant refusal to accept the punishment I was sent home to wait for whatever punishment they could devise, to make an example of me in front of others at the school. Not wanting other pupils to react in the same way, thinking it might cause an uprising of disobedience.

At one time the police were brought in, although I had no idea what they were going to charge me with, as I had done nothing wrong other than to resist some sort of draconian punishment that was dished out on a daily basis in the schools at that time. However, once my Mother threatened the teachers with assault if they went ahead with the punishment, and to take them to court, the whole affair became bogged down, hushed up and finally mysteriously dropped. This was quite funny really as she would not have been able to follow through with her threat to fight them in court, because she did not have the money to take them on.

After two weeks I was finally allowed to return to school as a hero amongst my fellow students but not the teachers, who gave me a wide berth for a time. They had wanted me to be moved to another school, as they did not want to be ridiculed by me in front of the other students, but there were no other school within five miles of the town. It was their belief that if I was out of the way, then they could carry on with their reign of terror at the school, a tradition that had been carried out for many years unhindered. They were right in that belief, because the teachers never lived the incident down, as a few of the other tougher students took the same stance as me, which I considered wrong, after all I had not gone through this experience simply because I wanted to defy the authorities and to look tough. The whole incident had been blown out of all proportion, because I had been wrongfully accused of something that I had not perpetrated. The teachers were further embarrassed when the real culprit finally owned up to them. The crime itself was a minor one, which only involved the student taking home a couple of exercise books and a few pencils. However, they never took it any further while trying to hush the whole event up, and I was never given an apology for their wrongful accusation, something I played on during what remained of my time at the school.

It has been reported over the years that the birth of Rock n Roll music in the mid fifties was the start of the young people taking over the way in which we all lived. I like to think that my stand also helped them break away from the tight stranglehold that the older generation had on our lives. Even in the musical world songs were written and played only for the older generation, but this was all about to change as the young started to thirst for the new music that was coming out of America. It had always been accepted by most people that we were ten years behind the Americans, and that whatever they did today, then we would do tomorrow. This was just a continuation along that same theme, and the young people of England could see nothing wrong in that.

Unfortunately, my aspirations and ambition of becoming the next Elvis were temporarily placed on hold, as Skiffle music became the craze of the time, sweeping over the whole country. Numerous new groups were springing up all over England, all following the new music idol of the moment, Lonnie Donegan, who had burst onto the scene the year earlier with a hit record called "Rock Island Line". I can still remember every single word of that song, even though at the time I did not like it.

By now Great Britain had its very own top twenty hit parade of songs, and the new charts were being released every Thursday in the national newspapers. It became the topic of conversation amongst most of the young people of the day, whether at school or while at play. We all thirsted for rock and roll music and the trivia that accompanied it. Gradually, the new magazines that were specially designed and aimed at the young were being launched on a regular basis, and they all started answering our long sort after questions.

With all of this new information that suddenly flooded the younger generation, an 'If you cannot beat them, join them' attitude that took over, and so we joined the many groups that were springing up everywhere in an effort to break into the musical entertainment industry that had taken over.

Steve arrived at my door one morning puffing and panting while waving a piece of his Father's newspaper at me. After he had calmed down, he explained that he had just found this gadget that played the chords for you on your guitar. I laughed and told him that he was imagining it. After all, if I could not play them how the hell could a flaming machine. Smiling at me, he opened the paper to show me an advert that claimed for 7 shillings and 6 pence you could be the proud owner of the new super guitar chord player. There was even a picture of this new wonder guitar attachment, which looked like a small black oblong box strapped to the neck of the guitar, with a few buttons sticking out of it.

I don't know where he got the money from, but somehow he talked his Mother into buying a postal order from the local Post Office and he sent away for it. I laughed at him and told him that he had been conned and that it was the last time that he would ever see his money or the stupid-looking chord maker gadget.

Can you imagine the look on my face when a couple of weeks later Steve was once again banging on my back door with the thing in his hands. It turned out to be made of plastic and just like the picture showed, you attached it to the bottom of the guitar neck just where the strings went into the tuner pegs. There were seven buttons on the thing and by each one was a letter depicting the chord name. Unfortunately, there was only enough room for the major chords, so God help you if you wanted to play anything else. Mind you, at that time we could only play a couple of chords anyway.

Because of the bad tuning of the guitar, it did not sound very good, and I found myself laughing at Steve who seemed to be enjoying the overall sound. I think at that time it must have made him feel that he was better than me. He now owned a gadget that allowed him to play all the seven major chords. However, some of them sounded exactly the same as each other, because he was not pushing the buttons down hard enough. Unfortunately, the novelty soon wore off as he started feeling a little funny playing it, as there were no top artists on television who were using them. I used to kid him by telling him that he was cheating and that the real stars of the day had learnt the hard way. Mind you, I would have given my right arm to be able to play a couple of the chords that Steve was by now playing. He finally threw it away as the embarrassment got the better of him, not wanting to be seen with it in public.

The funny thing is if we had taken the thing apart and got an idea how it worked, we would have been able to at least work out the seven major chords that we thirsted for knowledge of. Because inside the box was a combination of levers and pads that came down and made the necessary contact with the strings in the right order, to produce the chord. Unfortunately, it was all too advanced for us, and we reverted back to singing the whole song without a chord change. I later learnt that guitar necks are all different, and that this gadget had been designed for one specific guitar that was not even available in the United Kingdom, and that it was also made completely of plastic.

By this time, I had discovered Radio Luxemburg on my Mothers radio, a station that pumped out Rock n Roll music. Unfortunately once again it did not come on air until after 7pm in the evenings. However, there was also another drawback because it was also a foreign station, and the signal was not very strong and at times it was hard to hear as it constantly faded. Mind you, I would have tolerated anything just to hear all of the hit music coming out of America. A few of my favourites at that time were Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and of course Bill Haley and his Comets, while Chuck Berry singing "Maybelline" just blew me away with his new thumping guitar sound. This was guitar playing at its best and I would have loved to be able to play like it. The song had been out for some time, having been released around the middle of 1955, while today it's credited with being one of the all-time great Rock and Roll guitar numbers. Some people go as far as to say that it actually started the new guitar music craze.

I must say that at no time did my Mother ever try to dissuade me from trying to make it in the music business. I think that she knew that I would not have listened to her anyway and would have carried on regardless. She had the attitude that if I was to make it then it would all happen naturally, and that if I failed I would just drop back into becoming the ordinary sort of guy from next door. However, it did not stop her from buying me a small wooden radio from a local Women's Institute Jumble sale for the grand sum of only £2. This was a great present, as it allowed me to lie in bed and to scan the airwaves all night in my eager search for Rock n Roll music. I solved the problem of a weak signal by attaching the wire from the aerial point in the back of the radio to the metal springs of my bed. I did not realise it then, but I had discovered the receiving dish way ahead of everybody else, and it worked perfectly even in those days.

It was Colin who brought a little experience into the band, because his brother was a drummer and played with a local dance band, what I called square music. Therefore, we could ask him all of the questions that required answering, and there were many. Like how do you make the guitars sound like the ones we listen to on the radio, something that took years for us to work out.

We used to practice in Steve's backyard shed, which housed his Father's many tools and two old bicycles, but only while his Father was at work because he could not stand young people making a lot of noise around him. Lucky for us he worked shifts so whenever possible we would creep round so that nobody saw us, which was a bit of a laugh really, because we might have managed to get inside without being seen, but once we started playing I would guess that half the street knew where we were.

A further brown-coloured badly stained photo of the three monkeys, as some people in the area nicknamed us. See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil, although I never did find out which one I was supposed to be. It reminded me of the day that Colin taught us how to smoke, when he turned up for a band practice in Steve's shed with some tobacco, having taken it from his Father's tobacco pouch. Unfortunately, he did not have any cigarette papers; instead, he had brought a couple of squares of Izel toilet paper, which was commonly used in those days. I guess the best way I could describe it is to say that it looked more like very thin greaseproof paper that your Mother uses for cooking, because it sure as hell did not absorb anything, instead it usually spread it around as they say.

We watched him tear a thin strip of the paper off and then to lay a small amount of tobacco on the paper. He then rolled it up, licking the edge of the paper to make it stick and hold the whole thing together. He then lit one end and proceeded to puff away on the other, while looking like an old hand who had been smoking for many years. The only drawback was the fact that, as he drew the smoke through the cigarette, the heat from the smoke dried out his spit, and so the whole thing came undone, dropping the tobacco onto the floor. Therefore, we devised a way of re-licking the edge of the paper after taking about three puffs. That very first day we were all violently sick after our little escapade, not realising that there is a difference between pipe and cigarette tobacco, and Colin's Father just happened to smoke a pipe.

We all became hooked on the smoking craze and would show each other different ways of holding the cigarettes, in order that we might look hep as they say. I favoured the James Dean look, something I copied from a film I saw him starring in "Rebel Without a Cause". Colin favoured a style he copied from an advert he also saw at the cinema advertising Strand cigarettes. The caption usually read "You're never alone with a Strand", which was usually accompanied by several versions of a joke. Like the guy who was bald, but had one solitary very long hair growing from the top of his head, and his friends would tell him that you're never alone with a strand. Which always lead on to the guy who had a very long hair hanging from his nose, and when he sneezed he whipped himself to death with it. Anyway, Steve had found a different way for us, and so we all looked very cool. When you think about it there must be hundreds of ways of holding a cigarette, and I am sure we had not seen half of them.

This event had a long lasting effect on us all, as we picked up on what our parents described as a so called bad habit. Mind you it did not seem to hurt the film stars that we copied, as they were always puffing away while on screen.

There was a very small tobacconist shop in the town, standing right next to the cinema, and for those people who could not afford to purchase a full packet of 10 or 20 cigarettes, it sold a cheaper brand that came in a small open ended paper packet that contained just 6 of what became known as coughing nails, or coffin nails. Years later I was to realise that at first I thought it meant the first suggestion, however I later discovered that it meant the latter. Anyway, the tobacconist, a Mr Farrell, would even split these small packs of 6 up in to individual cigarettes, just so he could make a sale. So as you can imagine most of the young schoolboys of the day who had picked up the so called nasty bad habit, which almost everybody seemed to participate in, would call into his shop on a regular basis, before going to the flicks or pictures as we called it, spending their hard earned pocket money and then, after lighting one up, would watch it all go up in smoke, right before their very eyes. On many occasions, it was hard to watch the film in comfort as the whole cinema was completely engulfed in a thick layer of smoke.

As we became more and more hooked, and whenever we had the money, we would go for the cheap brands, such as Woodbines and Weights. I've often wondered how a cigarette got the name of Weights. After all, they were very small and felt as light as a feather. In fact, they were only half the diameter of the dearer ones known as Senior Service; I could never fathom that one out either. Although they usually portrait servicemen from the Royal Navy on their adverts.

Skiffle music became stronger and stronger, whipping up a quite a storm by not only taking over England, but most of the British Isle. Wherever you went it was the flavour of the time, and was being played constantly by everybody. To add to its phenomenon the young people of the day talked about nothing else. As far as they were concerned there did not seem to be anything else of relevance to discuss.

For a while Elvis was not the flavour of the month, something I subscribed to at that time. Although as far as I was concerned there was another reason, because at that time I could not get hold of the words to his songs. We had no record players to listen to, only our radios, if you were quick enough you might be able to write down a few words as the artist sang. However, if you still wanted to sing the song, then you had to make up the words that were missing, as we could not afford to purchase the musical song sheets, because they cost as much to buy as the record. Over a few weeks you became so used to singing the made-up words that when you finally learnt the correct ones if you did not like them, you stayed with the ones you had made up. To this day, I'm amazed when I check out some of the words to the songs I used to sing. Some were very crude while others were so totally off the plot that it's amazing how I ever came up with them in the first place, and got away with them in front of an audience.

However, there was another reason that stopped us purchasing the song sheet music, and it was not the money side of it. For some reason they were hard to understand, we could not read music, and if you could work it all out, it did not sound like the record version of the song. It was several years later before we realised that the sheet music was written especially for a piano, which is totally different to the guitar chords. It was also noted that a hit tune of the day was actually written in a different key to the record version, and in this way the song did not sound exactly like the hit version. There was just no way that the record companies were going to allow you to sound as good as their up and coming new stars.

As the next photo came in to view, the sight of Colin holding a washboard brought back inspiring memories of songs like "Cumberland Gap" and "It Takes a Worried Man," two more Lonnie Donegan hit songs of the day that were by now being repeated over and over in my head. However, to make them sound more authentic, Colin had started playing a washboard that he borrowed from his Mother, although, I might add without her permission. On the tips of his fingers, he wore little metal sewing thimbles that he also borrowed from his Mother's sewing basket. In order that he had one on every finger, we did the rounds of our families trying to collect any old plastic thimbles that had been left over from the Christmas Crackers.

He used to play with it laying flat on his lap, his left hand fingertips raking up and down the ribs of the board while the right hand tapped to the beat of the music.

It was also around this time that I changed the band name to The Johnny Viper Skiffle Group to the delight of my two companions, who by now felt they were part of a group. The word trio seemed to conjure up a jazz band to them, and we all hated that style of music. This must have been the first time that they both agreed completely with me and wanted to vote for the change. However, I told them that we were a democratic group, but that they need not worry because I had already voted it through democratic channels, so I did not need a show of hands. When Colin went home and told his parents what had happened, they told him that I would make a good politician, as I had already grasped the fundamentals of parliamentary democracy.

I was once asked by a dedicated follower of the band what a viper was. With a grin on my face, I told him it was a Vindscreen Viper and that it could usually be found sticking to car vinscreens. I then walked away before he had time to ask me to explain further.

A photo of the band's very first public appearance was enough to remind me of the day we performed at a school friend's birthday party. In my class at school were twin sisters Christine and Jenifer whose Father owned their own house and a small section of land. They persuaded him to let them throw their 15th birthday party in an old stable building that stood at the bottom of their garden. The twins decorated the building out with balloons and streamers, and even built a small stage for us to perform on all decked out with coloured paper. I must admit that I felt on top of the world that evening and that I had finally arrived on the scene as they say. This was what I was looking for in life and I just loved the attention that we attracted, especially from the girls.

The evening was great and we spent a long time congratulating each other on our performance. It was clear to see that the young people also enjoyed themselves, as it must have been the first time that they had ever seen a group playing live. With their untrained ears, I doubt very much that they would have been able to pick up the many mistakes that we all constantly made during the evening's performance.

While Steve and I played our guitars and sang along together on most of the songs, Colin would add the odd little lead break tune on his mouth organ and then revert back to his washboard. During other songs, Steve used his hands to tap out a beat on two cardboard boxes that we had borrowed from Jennifer's parents. I had shown Colin what I had learnt in tapping along to a tune at home, and he had taken to it very easily. In those days we travelled light as they say, especially when you realise what the bands of today are lugging around with them.

We had walked to the booking carrying our guitars under our arms, while wearing the clothes that we intended to perform in on stage. That consisted of blue denim jeans with very large turn ups, white tee shirts and black leather jackets, something that we copied from an early photo of the American rock star Gene Vincent that I had found in a magazine. This just happened to be the same clothes that we normally walked around town wearing.

By this time, I had also perfected what was known as a Tony Curtis haircut. The main features being that the sides were combed back around from the left and right to meet at the back. So that it resembled what we call a duck's arse or a DA as it became known. The front was somewhat short and flat with a few of the front middle hairs pulled forward down over my forehead and brought to a point, while the whole scalp was drenched in Brylcream to keep it all in place. On our feet, we wore what later became known as brothel creepers, they were suede shoes with very thick ribbed crepe soles. We also wore wide black silver studded belts around our waists. Although the studded belt had its draw backs, as it badly scratched the back of the guitar as you were playing it. However, it was a useful tool if you found yourself involved in what became known as a ruckus or a fight as it's commonly known. Unfortunately, these became quite common as the local guys became very jealous of the attention that their girlfriends took of us while on stage, and even more as they chatted to us during the breaks that we took quite frequently. I say frequently because we would only play for about twenty minutes, before we took a further twenty-minute break.

The very next photo was in colour and was a beautiful shot of Jennifer standing in front of the old stable building where the party had been held. I needed no further prompting to remind me that on that very same day, she had become my girlfriend. Not only that, but my very first steady girlfriend. She must have had a profound effect on me because that night I renamed my precious guitar "Jenny" after her. This would have also been the very first time that I kissed Jennifer full on the lips. However, the cuddling was soon broken up by her Mother who walked on to us in one of the darker corners of the building. Because of that embarrassment, for the rest of the evening we survived solely on hen pecks to the cheeks.

While looking at this photo, I could not help thinking of the song "Only Sixteen", by Craig Douglas, that was a big hit at the time. I felt that the words fitted Jennifer just perfectly. Secretly I would sing the song, but at no time would I ever perform it in public. After all I did not want to tarnish the image I was trying to create and put across to my fans, as being that of a rocker.

Later I was surprised to realise that I could have gone off with any of the many girls who attended the party that night. However, it made no difference to me as I had fallen hook line and sinker as they say for Jennifer. While I still looked at all the other girls and wondered, to me Jennifer was the prize and I was proud to parade her around in front of my friends.

As the band played I could not help noticing that most of the females attending were attracted to the band, and I could not help thinking that this must have been exactly how it must have been for Elvis, when he first started out. However, I was brought back to reality, when my wondering thoughts contributed to me making a few mistakes in my playing. As is usual in the music industry, when you make one mistake others are quick to follow, because of your embarrassment in front of a large crowd, especially if they are people you know, although these thoughts are soon forgotten as you get back into the song. The whole event made me feel good and now that I had tasted a little success, there was no way that I was going to give up this life style for the foreseeable future.

A photo of the three of us playing in the town's market square surrounded by all of its very old historic buildings brought back some happy times. This location exposed us to a much larger audience than we had been used to. Most of the townsfolk would shop on a Saturday morning, and all had to walk past us at some time or other during that time. Therefore, you could say that we became the talk of the town, in one way or another. Either they liked us, or they disliked the way in which we blocked the footpath leading to their favourite shops.

Because we were not using microphones, we did not need electricity and so we had moved onto busking. Each Saturday morning we would take a bus ride up to the town square, where we would set up and play to the passing crowd. Several times the police moved us on, until the local people complained to the council that we were doing no harm, and that we helped brighten up the town on a cold and miserable Saturday morning. To our amazement, the council granted us a special license to play in the square every Saturday morning I say morning because in those days all of the shops shut at midday, but we were not allowed to accept money. However, it did not stop us from leaving an old cloth cap in front of us so that appreciative shoppers could contribute to a cup of tea to warm us up on the odd occasion. This period became known as our apprenticeship, and it certainly hardened us up for what was to follow.

On one such Saturday morning, a local guy from our school approached us, wanting to help us whenever we played. He loved the music, but not having a musical note in his body, he reckoned that this would be the best way for him to move around in the music industry. In his words, he wanted to brush alongside the rich and famous, which seemed rather strange to us, as we were neither. At one time he pointed out that as I played guitar, I must know hundreds of chords. I had to think about that for a moment, just wondering if he was trying to be smart and to catch me out in front of the other guys. I finally told him that I was not a rhythm guitarist and that I only played lead guitar. It seemed to satisfy him, and we moved on quickly to another subject. It was a good job that the conversation did not carry on about chords, because I would have to guess that we only knew about four of them at that time and that was between all of us. After a couple of weeks discussing it amongst ourselves, I finally gave him the nod to join us. William Jolly, or Billy as he became known, was allowed to follow us around as long as he did whatever we asked of him; unfortunately, he would have to do it all for love as there was no pay to go with the job.

Another page of the photo album and the music within my head moved on to the sounds of Lonnie Donegan singing "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour", taking me onto 1959. As Joe Brown, the Cockney guitarist, said later of Lonnie Donegan, he was like Jesus and we were his disciples, if asked we would have followed him anywhere, and many did.

It was also the year that the music died, according to the words of a song known as "American Pie" that Don McLean wrote and had a big hit with on both sides of the Atlantic. Sadly, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper were all killed in an aeroplane crash in the USA. All were on the verge of brilliant musical careers, but were cut down in their prime. However, I always felt that it was the day that pop music was reborn but to a wider audience. The whole incident only strengthened the young people of the day, and all three stars had major hit records after their deaths, something that was unheard of in those days, and was to be emulated a dozen times over in the future.

I had been out of school now for almost six months, and having a daytime job, placed a small amount of cash in my pocket to be used in trying to improve my musical skills. At least now I could purchase some new strings for the guitar, having been playing a five-string for nearly two months. I might add that a five-string guitar does not sound too good, and turns a few heads if used during a performance.

After a time we became fed up with the sound of the washboard and anyway Colin's Mother had found out that he was borrowing it. One day he turned up with an old set of drum sticks that his brother had given him, and a couple of different sized small cardboard boxes. He then amazed us by demonstrating to us some beats that his brother had taught him along with some sort of beat known as a para diddle, whatever that was. It's what is known as progress and anyway it improved our sound and that was what counted. Both Steve and I could not believe what a different sound he produced along with the sticks while playing on different sized boxes and bottles and cans half filled with water.

A photo of the band as a five piece reminded me of an incident that happened one Saturday morning while we were performing in the town's market square. The band was taking a short break when we were approached by a couple of other young guys who went to school with us but lived on the other side of town. They did not hold back, just came straight out and asked if they could join our band. Not being sure of their motives or talent, I came up with a few feeble excuses as to why at that very moment in time we did not need anybody else in our line up. If our music was not improving, then our use of musical terminology was. I told them that the main reason was that we were not earning enough money to split it another couple of ways, and anyway that was not a lie; because during the Saturday morning busking sessions the most we ever collected was about 10 shillings.

Jeremy Maynard, the one who was doing all of the talking, asked if he could look at my guitar. At first I wasn't sure and hesitated. After all if he were to knock or drop it, it might get damaged or, heavens forbid, he might even knock it out of tune. This was a bit of a laugh as it had been out of tune for weeks. At that time, I had to take it to a music teacher to get it tuned up whenever I had five shillings to pay him. However, I need not have worried as Jeremy amazed me by first tuning it up, which left me with a gasped look on my face. Then as he strummed the strings, the sound that came from within the little hole in the middle of the body was like a breath of fresh air. It sounded so much better than I was used to, and furthermore he could play more chords than me.

He continued to amaze us with licks and riffs that he had obviously spent hours trying to perfect, wanting to impress us with the best of them. He was streets ahead of me, but there was no way that I was going to let him dwarf me. After all it was my band and I was its leader but, on the other hand his guitar work would certainly improve the band's overall sound. Being so good it was obvious to me that some of his talent would rub off on the rest of us, and maybe with his help I would be able to advance my own guitar playing to a higher level. Compared with what Jeremy was playing, I'm sure we hadn't even reached the first rung of the ladder, while he was already half way up and waving back at us.

Jeremy had a large mop of brightly coloured red hair and so it was obvious that at school he was known as Ginger. However, he was also very cocky, knowing that he was good and flaunting it to us at every opportunity. His playing was so good that we just accepted it without an argument, while hoping to tap in on his talent at every opportunity.

Later he was to confide in me that he had been lucky and had found a book called "Play in a Day" by British guitar legend Bert Weedon that had been published in 1957. Later it was to become the guitar learner's bible, as almost every guitarist in Britain owned a copy of it at some time, after Bert had come to the attention of the British public with a hit instrumental record called "Guitar Boogie Shuffle". Ginger used to laugh when he told everybody that it was possible to play "Jingle Bells" in a day, and that he was living proof of that feat. I've often wondered how many up and coming guitarists could also admit to the same feat during those very early days.

I looked at the other members, who by this time were both standing with their mouths wide open. Without hesitation they both nodded in agreement that they wanted him to join the band. I then went through a few rules that they would be expected to adhere to, and finally held out my hand welcoming them to the Vipers Skiffle group. I had been so wrapped in what Jeremy had been playing that I suddenly realised that we did not know what his friend John Burgess played. It turned out that he played what was known in those days as a tea chest bass. It was made from an old tea chest and had a small hole made in the bottom of the chest. A piece of string was then threaded though the hole and a knot made on the end of the string that was on the inside of the box. The box was then stood with the opening on the ground and the flat bottom facing upwards. The end of the string that was protruding through the top of the tea chest was then measured, and after pulling the string tight was tied to the top of a broom handle that had the other end perched onto a corner of the box. The player then plucked the string and by applying pressure on the top of the handle by slightly pulling it backwards, the note it made would change. However, there was one big problem and that was the size of the thing, but J.B as we called him, had solved that problem by using his Father's wooden builder's wheelbarrow, and would push it around to each booking or practice that he attended. The only stipulation we made and placed on J.B. and his tea chest bass was that he had to paint it red, so it stood out to the crowd, and to paint the name of the band on the front, which he did with no complaints.

Jeremy also brought something else to the band that was to have a profound effect on us all, and that was his Mother's wind-up gramophone. We spent many hours around his house constantly playing the same songs, in order that we could all learn our respective parts to play. This was not as easy as you might think, because in those days we had to wind it up after every record had been played. To complicate the operation further, after only two plays we also had to change the rather large brass needle that was lowered onto the record every time we played a song. This became a big joke because, once we had run out of new needles, we went back to the old ones that we had changed earlier. After a time nobody knew a new needle from an old one. The cost of purchasing a new tin of needles prohibited us from buying them very often. Somehow, we just got used to the crackling sounds that usually accompanied each song that we played.

Another big drawback was her record collection, which consisted of material from the late forties and very early fifties. However, Jeremy had grown up learning most of these old songs, it having been the basis of the guitar playing that was by now paying off for him. He was so good that he could pick up a tune very quickly and helped those around him with their parts to play. He had also bought a couple of Rock n Roll records from the local record shop that had just opened in the town, but at 5 shillings each they were not cheap.

As all of us by now had daytime jobs, we started buying our own records on a kind of roster basis, and so each month we would work out which one we wanted to purchase next and who was going to pay for it. However, our choices were still limited to what was available in the shop. At that time most shops would have a reasonable selection of the English released records, which in some cases were very poor versions of the American songs. The original American Rock n Roll versions were just starting to filter through to the shops, but up until then we did not have a very big choice to choose from at our local shop.

However, my Mother became the saviour of the moment when she took a cleaning job on the local American airbase. This meant that she was able to get hold of some of the highly sort after records from the States, as she was allowed to buy them from the base BX stores. She even found some of them in the waste bins, as servicemen dumped them before returning to the USA. As far as the band was concerned, she had walked into Aladdin's cave. After a time I managed to get her to purchase whatever we wanted, as long as it was available.

The difference that the new guys made to the bands overall sound amazed me, as we seemed to grow in the popularity stakes around town. The work started to come in and we found ourselves playing somewhere around the town almost every Friday or Saturday night. Most of the work we undertook was just for the thrill of performing in front of people, something we all loved. It was a case of "hey look at me I am better that you, as I am up here playing, while you are down there paying to hear it". Most nights we would have been lucky if we received £2 for the night's work, and when split five ways it only amounted to 8 shillings. When we took into account that most of us were earning around £3 a week from our daytime jobs, it places it in perspective, and so if we played twice a week it could amounted to half our weekly wage. While I was saving a further five shillings by having Ginger tune up my guitar for free.

Suddenly my eyes fell upon a photo that showed a group of girl fans, all pestering the band for kisses and autographs. It reminded me of the part that the girl fans were starting to play in our chosen careers. It was something that was starting to become more common, and we were not sure how to handle it. Especially after we had thought that only the very famous rock stars were treated in this way. Most of us had girlfriends that accompanied us around to the different venues. However, it did not seem to stop us picking up other girls during the night, whenever the situation arose. Although I must say that I had tried to stay true to Jennifer, as we had been going steady, ever since we played at her birthday party.

Occasionally I might have gone with other girls but, in most cases, I never even gave them a kiss on the cheek at the end of the evening. I would want to go through the thrill and dare of picking them up, but once I had achieved the pick up, I thought better of it, not wanting to cheat on Jennifer. It might sound strange, but that was how it was for me, deep inside I still worshipped Jennifer. Whenever I handled my Jenny, as I called my guitar, I would run my hands over its curves just thinking of her. In her hands, my personality changed completely, and I became putty to be manipulated by her in any way she chose. No longer was I the bully, who always wanted my own way, I completely changed in order not to lose her. However, all the time that I had been going with her, we had only cuddled and kissed each other.

The subject of sex is a strange one. Although by then I was sixteen years old, I had not experienced sex with any girl. I'm not saying that I was different, because most boys of that era were the same; we became sexually aroused whenever we looked at the odd picture that was handed around the young people of the day. Sex did not happen early amongst the average boy in the late fifties. Oh, there were the odd exceptions, if you could believe everything that other young people of your age told you. Most of the time I tended not to believe half of what I heard. I was of the opinion that they just loved to hear the sound of their own voices.

Fellow students in the playground had taught me all I knew on the subject, while I was still at school. Somehow I doubted half of what the boys usually boasted about amongst themselves. I had grown up thinking that you only had sex when you wanted to have children and until then, you did not participate. If you did, the girl would become pregnant and then you would be forced to marry her, in what was known as a shotgun wedding, and somehow that was not for me. I realised that once I was married then things would change, and anyway in those days most of the girls wanted a white wedding as they say. That is how I saw it, and as far as I was concerned, for the moment it was not going to change.

There was also another reason that attracted my attention to the question of sex, and that was that none of the pop stars of the day seemed to be married. It was why the girls all went mad trying to grab one to marry. I had also realised that girls made up a large proportion of our audience, and that they were paying just to see us, or so I thought.

During the early part of the evening, the crowd at the venue would mainly consist of girls, because the guys would all be in the pubs trying to get drunk. It was their way of trying to summon up a little Dutch courage to pick up a girl, when they finally made their way to the dance. Many never did as they became too drunk, and passed out before they even left the pub. The favourite drink of the time to get you drunk very quickly was a couple of glasses of rough cider and few small glasses of what was known as Rich Ruby wine, I think it was some type of port.

Others dipped out in the girlfriend stakes when they eventually turned up too late, to find that the girl they were after had already been grabbed by somebody else. A band notices these things very easily, because we are up above the audience and looking down at them. We have the best views in the house, and I used to watch other members of the band eyeing up the girls, and grabbing what they considered to be a good looking one before the yobbos returned from the pubs. That in itself would usually cause trouble for the band, as we became a target from the would be suitor, backed up by his drunken mates. However, my reputation from school had gone before me and once they realised that I would become involved, most of the incidents fizzled out without too much bother. That is not to say that there were no fights because in actual fact there were plenty, but somehow we never came off to badly. However, Billy took a bad beating one night after eyeing up one of the girls during the night. We found him bleeding badly and doubled up in a heap out the back of the venue by the outside toilets after a crazed, drunken boyfriend, along with two of his mates had taken his revenge.

A hit film and song of the day, sung by Anthony Newley, was called "Idle on Parade", and most young people liked to hear it, even though it was all about serving in the British Army as a National Service recruit. However, we became even more excited the day that National Service was finally dropped by the Government in late 1959. I had always said that you would never catch me in the Army, but I guess the truth is I would have gone if I were called up, because there is no way that I would have gone to prison as an alternative and of having been branded a conscientious objector. It's a funny thing, but most of the objectors during the last war, who all went to prison, all ended up with good jobs like bank managers and insurance agents just a few years after the war was over. So it never hurt them in anyway, maybe it's because the average person has a short memory or something I really don't know.

We had all been worried National Service would spell the end of the band. We were all of slightly different ages and so the 18 months of training would have meant that it would have been nearly four years before we were all reunited and able to get it back together again. It was something that none of us wanted to go through, and somehow we never considered that we could have joined another band.

By this time I had gone completely off of Elvis when he had joined the American army. What with his very short haircut and some of the material that was released while he was away, he was no longer one of my idols and I thought that from that point he steadily went downhill. To me he had sold out and become a bit of a wimp. It was my big worry that we would all go downhill and end up just like Elvis. However, now it was full steam ahead and onto bigger and better things, as we all congratulated ourselves being saved a slow death as they say. It never occurred to any of us that this music craze might only last for a couple of years, to us; it was going to be a lifetime's experience.

A colour photo of my new rock and roll idol Cliff Richards is all I need to remember my favourite hit song of all times, "Move It" and to hear its introduction usually sends a shiver down my spine. With Elvis having slipped down my list of all-time greats, it was Cliff who had replaced him at the top, although at the time it was the song "Move It", his very first record release that swung me over to him. Since then he's had a steady string of hits that were all good Rock n Roll numbers, and most of them were originals and penned by English song writers. Steadily he was making progress into the heavily American dominated British Hit Parade, and at least I thought he was almost as good as the Yanks. Because he was British, we received a steady stream of publicity and information on his background, and that was what I wanted. However, he was always referred to as Britain's answer to Elvis Presley. Well anyway at least I could pout my lips just like him, having already had a couple of year's practice trying to copy Elvis.

Because of the growth of the band, our practice sessions had by now moved to Jennifer's back shed with the blessings of her Father, as long as we did not make too much noise after eight o'clock at night.

Colin surprised us all at one of these practices sessions when he turned up with an old drum kit that he had bought from his brother, who by this time had moved on and was now playing in a Jazz band out of town. It was just a simple basic kit that featured a very large old military style big drum as the kick drum. The whole kit looked as though it had been through a hard life, but at least it was a drum kit. Furthermore Colin had secretly been having lessons from his brother, and shocked us further when he ran around the kit demonstrating to us a short drum solo. We were all amazed at what he did, and of the possibilities that now awaited us. However, when the practice was over, all of us had suddenly become aware that when you have drums in a band, they are loud. There were times when we could not hear ourselves sing, let alone playing our instruments. This brought on a complete new line of thought for us. To go fully electric, like Cliff Richard and his band, was going to cost us a lot of money. After all, we would all have to go and purchase new electric guitars, and then there would be microphones and a public address system, not to mention some sort of transport to move the gear around.

My attention fell upon a photo of Nobby Clarke, who had been one of my old school chums, reminding me of the day he had approached me with what looked like a small silver piece of metal about two inches wide and a half an inch thick, with a wire hanging from it. He went on to explain that he had always been interested in building radios, and that he had just read about how to build what he called a pick up in a book called "The Practical Wireless". It would electrify a guitar and would make it sound louder. He gave it to me and asked if I would like to try in out for him, and that if I tested it out, he might be able to improve on it. Unfortunately he did not tell me any other details; I guess he thought that as I was a guitarist I knew all about them.

I rushed home very eager to try it out, but was dumbfounded to find a funny looking plug on the end of the wire coming out of what I was now calling a pickup. I later found out that it was called a jack plug. However, Nobby had told me that it electrifies the guitar, so how was I going to plug it in to the power socket? I decided to cut the plug off and rewire it to a spare five amp 240volt electric plug that I found in our back shed. I then used a couple of three inch long brass screws to fix the pick up across the hole in the front of the guitar, about an inch below the strings. It did not enter my head that I was destroying the guitar, to me it was just wood, so you could screw anything you liked into it.

Lucky for me I laid the guitar on its back on the settee before I plugged the pick up into the mains plug and switched it on. There was one hell of a loud bang and the room was instantly filled with thick black smoke as all the lights went out in the house. The very bright orange flame that I saw spew out of the pickup melted all of the strings and left a black ugly looking burn mark, which I could not clean off from around the sound hole in the front of the guitar. So there was no way that I was going to cover up this major catastrophe and I was set back in my plans to become electrified.

Anyway, how was I to know what was going to happen? After all I'm just the guy who plays these things. I'm not a brain surgeon or electronic whiz kid. Mind you, I do not think I would be here today if I had been holding the guitar with my hands touching all the strings. My first reaction was that I had used up another of my nine lives, and put the incident down to experience, telling Nobby that it was his faulty wiring that had caused the problem. Not to mention the expense my Mother had in getting an electrician in to fix the fuses in the house. We never did get rid of the terrible smell of burning from the room, and so we had to entertain our friends in the kitchen for a couple of months until the smell had mellowed with age. At the end of the day, I was only too pleased that I did not have to go out and waste my record money on a new settee.

Unfortunately, I had to go out and buy a new set of strings and Nobby went back to the drawing board and built me a new pick up. Only this time he came home with me and attached the wire to the back of my little wooden radio that my Mother had bought me, all the time talking to me about speakers and amplifiers as he called them. Well, I had never heard the words before, let alone known what the hell they did. However, I was amazed how good it sounded and he was right it did make it sound louder. Not only that, I could adjust the volume on the front of the radio.

At the very next practice session I turned up with my little wooden radio set, and placed it on a table beside me. I then plugged my guitar into the back and set the controls. I must admit that I cringed slightly as I switched on the electricity, whilst praying that it would not blow up in my face like it had at my first attempt. I then silenced the rest of the band as I strummed a couple of chords for them and turned up the volume to maximum. By this time the speaker was so overloaded that the little radio set was vibrating on the table, and the sound it was pumping out was distorted and not very clear, but I was electrified and that was what counted. Unbeknown to me I had also invented a Fuzz box without realising it, but that was to be invented years later.

You could have carved the atmosphere with a knife. Nobody said a word; they just stood there with their mouths wide open. I guess by today's standards it was very small, being rated at only 3 watts, but to me it was like listening to 3000 beautiful watts.

Once the excitement had died down, both Steve and Ginger started bombarding me with questions, which basically came down to both of them wanting to go electric and whether I could help them. Suddenly I was the expert on the subject, and there was no way that I was going to let them know of my stupid mistake when I plugged mine into an electric mains socket. No, they thought I had all the answers and as far as I was concerned I was going to let them believing it.

For Ginger there was no problem, because he had a steel-string guitar and I got Nobby to make him a pick up, although this time Nobby wanted cash up front to purchase the parts. However, when it came to Steve's guitar, the day we fitted his new pickup we could not get a note out of it. At first we all blamed Nobbys wiring, but after he had taken it apart three times, and concluded that there was nothing wrong with it, it suddenly dawned on us that Steve's guitar was strung with nylon strings, and so the way the pickup was made, it could not detect the note each string was making. Steve was not pleased, because he had given Nobby the money for the parts and now he could not use it. That day Nobby beat a hasty retreat from the practice session while keeping Steve's money firmly in his pocket.

We continued playing even though nobody, and that included the other members of the band, could not hear poor old Steve's guitar playing. By now the sound from Ginger's and my guitars were sounding quite loud, even though together they were only putting out about 8 watts of sound. Ginger had been able to purchase a much larger radio than mine from the local junk shop and it kicked out nearly 5 watts of sound, and so the race was on to out do each other for bigger and more powerful amplifiers. It never occurred to us that you could turn these things down. For some reason, we all thought that if it had a 10 on the volume dial, then 10 was where it should be set at all times. Anyway, together the 8 watts was quite loud and drowned everything else out on stage. This meant that the drummer had to play louder so that he could be heard, and you know what drummers can be like. It became one big vicious circle that ended up with the audience out front of the stage not being able to hear the vocals clearly.

In desperation and worried about not being heard, Steve restrung his guitar with metal strings, not realising that they would place an increased pressure on the neck and bridge of the guitar. However, with nobody around to guide us, how were we supposed to know of these things? What we didn't know was of no concern to us. It was a case of sorting out your problems while trying to fix them the best way possible. For an amp, Nobby came up with a novel idea and talked Steve into purchasing a very old rather large tatty looking radiogram for about £5, they were all the rage in those days.

Most families had a radiogram, but they did not play them very often. They were usually positioned in the front room of their houses for show, and anyway not many people could afford to purchase the records on a regular basis. In most houses the front room was only used a couple of times a year, usually at Christmas when the family came round, or if anybody in the house passed away they were usually laid out in state, as they say, before being buried. Anyway, once the novelty of owning a radiogram had worn off, nobody would bother to buy any more records, and so most record collections were always very old. These radiograms had been designed more as a piece of furniture than as the record player cum radio receiver that they actually were.

Anyway, Nobby ran a wire from Steve's lovely brand new shinny pick up, and joined it to the two wires that came out of the record player's arm where the needle would normally run from. It was unbelievable; Steve was able to extort about 6 watts of power from that thing, which made him twice as loud as me. Now it would be me who the audience could not hear, and so it suddenly turned into a race as to who could out build the other, or at least until the money ran out.

Unfortunately, there was one big draw back with Steve and Nobby little invention and that was transportation. It was only after they had carted the radiogram on the builder's barrow to the first booking that they suddenly realised what a task they had given themselves. Once at the venue it took at least three people to lift it off the cart and in to the hall. The mere thought of lugging it around every week was beginning to turn into a nightmare for the whole band.

During the first show when Steve used this big monstrosity, he experienced a few more teething problems when during one particular song the vibration that was coming from the speaker, and I do mean vibration, flicked an internal switch from record player over to radio, and the startled audience was instantly treated to the swinging strings of the Henry Mancini Orchestra at full volume. To hide our embarrassment we all kept playing. Unfortunately, Steve's 6 watts of power drowned me out, and so Henry Mancini won the day. We had to stop playing while Steve reset the switch back to record player. This however was not an isolated incident as it was repeated a couple more times during the night with the grand finale being when the bridge of Steve's guitar, not being able to with stand the tension of the new steel strings suddenly tore off, leaving a big gaping hole in the front of his guitar just below the sound hole. If it had happened today, you could have said that the guitar had stereo sound holes, but stereo had not been invented in those days.

Frustration started to creep in, and so once again the question of the band going fully electrified came up, time and time again.

As we all had fairly good daytime jobs, it did not take us much time to decide that it was the way to go. However, none of us would have been able to pay for our gear with cash, and so we approached our parents to sign for us, so that we could each buy our own instruments along with some kind of amplification for them on hire purchase payments, or on tick as it was known in those days.

As a first step in the right direction we all pooled what cash we could lay our hands on, and with £30 we bought a second hand public address system from a shop in Ipswich, along with three microphones. It had all belonged to the local cricket club, having been attached to the cricket club hut, and they were now up grading. Lucky for us, apart from the two very large trumpet like speakers it all came in an old leather case so it was easy to cart around. Talking of carts, at that time none of us could drive and so we scrounged another wooden cart from J.B.'s Father, so that those of us that lived the other end of town to Jeremy and J.B. could push our gear to the bookings and practice sessions.

However, when it came to J.B. having to change over to a bass guitar, well that was a whole new ball game. The day he purchased a small semi-acoustic Echo Electric Bass along with a Vox AC 100 Foundation amplifier with an 18-inch speaker which rattled the guts out of anybody on stage whenever it was played, was the day that our sound changed completely, taking us in an entirely different direction.

Up until then, all he really had to do was to just keep plucking the string in time with the beat. It did not really matter what tension he applied to the string, as the thumping note he made just seemed to fit in with what the rest of us were playing. It was more of a beat thing rather than the note. With the bass guitar, he had to wear it around his neck just like our guitars. So gone were the days when he could rest his foot on the tea chest as he played it, and it was going to be of no use asking me which string to pluck, as I had six of them and he only had four. For J.B. it turned into a complete new learning curve.

The bass guitar had not been around long at that time and so most players were still experimenting and finding new ways of playing it. About the first time that most people in England saw one was in 1958, while an American band known as the Treniers were touring the country along with the Chas McDevitt Skiffle group whose lead singer Shirley Douglas had shown great interest in the instrument and how it was played after being shown its workings by the Treniers. A year later, she brought one into the country from the States and then started using it on a later tour. Although at the same time, Jet Harris from Cliff Richard's backing band is also credited with being the very first British person to ever play one in front of a live British audience.

J.B.'s task was made a little easier as he found a book that Shirley Douglas had written called "The Easy Guide to Rhythm and Blues for Bass Guitar". However, there was nobody locally whom he could turn to for advice. It was a case of sticking with it the best way he could, although Ginger would tell him the name of the chord we were all supposed to be playing, and together they worked out which one he could play. There were no riffs or runs for a start, it was only single notes until he realised that, after hitting a particular note, he could follow it by hitting the note that was immediately behind it on the next lowest string.

One of the big problems was that when the bass guitar craze kicked in, most players were using a double bass, which was a totally different instrument to play. Not wanting to change over they had put the word around that it was just a passing craze and would be dead in a couple of years. Now where have I heard that saying before? Therefore, most of them decided to stay with their beloved double basses and to watch what might develop. This meant that the vast majority of players were all new to the game, and that they had to invent ways of playing the instrument. Therefore, it was an exciting time where anything went, if it sounded right then it was okay to play it. During the middle sixties when the double bass players realised that the bass guitar was actually here to stay, they all rushed out to buy one to become part in the new music scene that was rapidly taking over the country. Unfortunately, most of them found that they could not adapt to the new instrument and died a slow death and dropped out of sight completely. Jet Harris, who had been a highly successful Jazz player of the double bass, was one of the few to make a successful transition over to the new sounds of the bass guitar, when he received his first big break into rock and roll music by joining Tony Crombie and his Rockets.

Steve and I both bought second-hand Red Burns electric guitars quite cheap from a pawnshop in Ipswich, in order that we might look, and sound, just like the Shadows, Cliff Richard's backing band, which were using them on stage at the time. We were also lucky to buy two Vox AC15 amplifiers, each fitted with one 12-inch speaker, which went with the guitars. So now we both looked and sounded alike and would not be able to outdo each other in the volume department.

After changing the looks of the band along with its sound, it was only fitting that we change the name and so, after much deliberation, I finally announced to the other members of the band that, from that day on, we were to be known as 'Johnny Morris and the Convertibles'. For some unknown reason I still liked the name Johnny, I had even insisted on the band using it all the time, and so after just a few weeks it stuck. Even the public picked up on it and so the name Johnny was here to stay, along with the 'Convertibles'. There had never been a Morris Convertible car in England, but I liked the ring it had to it. The word convertible had come out of watching too many of the American films that seemed to flood the British cinemas in those days.

By now my old photo album was restoring my memory at such a rate that I was way ahead of its pages. As I scanned the photos they seemed to come alive, reminding me of so much detail that I no longer required them to remind me of my past. As each memory popped up it would lead me straight into another and then another.

I lay back on my pillow and continued my journey without the album that lay spread open on the bed beside me.
Chapter 2

## THE APPRENTICESHIP

With the purchase of our two second-hand Red Burns electric guitars, we were surprised to find that our playing became much easier and more fun. The distance between the strings and the neck was reduced down to just a few millimetres, unlike our old guitars where the gap was measured in inches. This meant that not so much effort and pressure was required to hold down a chord. The benefit was that the chord sounded nice and sweet while the strings did not cut into our fingers. Coupled with this, Ginger had received a letter from his pen friend in America, informing him that his American guitar idol, James Burton, was stringing his guitar in a completely different way to most guitarists of the day. This was why it had been almost impossible for us to emulate the sound he was creating on record. He was using a banjo 1st as his 1st guitar string, and the guitar 1st string as his second and so on, finally throwing away the guitar 6th string as it was not required. It was also rumoured that sometimes he even used a banjo G-string in the 3rd guitar position. This enabled him to hold the chord down more easily and to be able to bend the strings with ease, sometimes pushing them halfway across the neck of the guitar, something we had all been struggling with in England for many years. At times, our strings had felt like number eight fencing wire, but we had persevered, not knowing anything different. However, armed with this information we were now being encouraged to purchase thinner strings, something that had never been contemplated before. Up until then the music shops of the day only offered a packet of a pre-selected strings. There were no singles strings leaving you with only 2 choices, take it or leave it. However, the music scene in England was slowly opening up and gradually items started arriving from America and Europe to fill the shelves of our local shops giving us a much wider choice.

The Vox AC15 amplifiers that we acquired with our Burns guitars were great and we felt as big and as good as Cliff Richard's backing band he Shadows, the group we were trying to emulate. We even perfected the Shadows special stage walk, as it became known, while playing covers of their songs. However, as with most bands, we all wanted to constantly keep turning up our amps, and so it was not long before we discovered that our newly acquired 15 watts was not quite loud enough for us.

The main reason we had purchased both the guitars and amplifiers was so that we could look and sound just like the Shadows on stage. Unfortunately, within a couple of weeks of us buying them, the Shadows suddenly appeared on a new ATV television show called "Oh Boy", playing American Fender guitars. We were all dumbfounded and had no idea why they had switched over. Somebody within the band made the wise crack that it was probably their old guitars that we had bought and so, with that in mind, that was what we told most of our fans that enquired where we had bought them.

It was also noticeable that on the very same Television show they were not using the Vox AC15 amps that everybody had gotten used to seeing them perform with. What they had on stage stacked up behind them looked larger in overall size, although they were still manufactured by Vox. In fact, they were using Vox AC30 amps with two 12-inch speakers, and we were devastated. It had come as a big shock to find out that they had changed over to Fender guitars, but it was an even bigger shock to discover that they were now using bigger and better amps. We all felt devastated and cheated, because we had spent all our money to achieve something that had just been snatched away from us. Now there was just no way that we could look and sound like The Shadows on stage and we had empty pockets to prove it.

Electrification also brought further problems for the band, in the form of where to plug our amplifiers in while on stage. Most of the village halls only had one electric plug and that was usually located in the furthest position possible away from the stage. Coupled with this, we had no electricians in the band, so it was usually a case of suck it and see. If we blew the fuse, we would have to work out how to replace it. We soon became experts in replacing the fuses with nails, pieces of fence wire and silver paper obtained from our cigarette packets. At first, we used to run very long electric leads across the dance floors to the only plug, which was usually positioned by the main entrance door. However, we were constantly being unplugged as the dancers got their feet all tangled up in the wire as it snaked its way towards the stage.

Above the stages was usually positioned one bare 40-watt bulb, 'Stage Lighting' I believe it was called in those days. Anyway, it was a power supply and nearer the stage and so we started plugging our amps into this socket. However, this meant that the stage was now in darkness and so we could not see what we were playing. Came the day when Billy turned up with a crude metal frame and attached a 100-watt bulb to its top. This was positioned near the door pointing towards the stage, thus inventing a stage spotlight. As it stood near the power point by the door, there was no need to run a long extension lead across the dance floor. With the bulb being several feet away from the stage, not much light arrived upon the band for us to see what we were doing. However, it did give the stage a dark seductive atmosphere that helped us portray a secretive image to the public. This was further heightened the day that Billy hung a piece of red coloured paper in front of the bulb. He had found it in a tin of sweets that he had pinched from his grandmother. Now we had a dark red, secretive look on the stage, and we were all pleased with the result, even though it sometimes affected our playing.

Billy also came up with a novel idea of making a strobe light to use on stage. Not only had he never seen one in action, he also had no idea how they worked. However, I agreed that if it turned out okay, then we would let him use it on stage. He got hold of a very small motor that he stole from his grandmother's radiogram, which he claimed she never listened to anyway and so she would not miss it. He screwed it to the top of a block of wood measuring about 9 inches square. To the front shaft of the motor he attached a rather large round cardboard disc that must had been about 14 inches in diameter. In this he cut out a single hole, using a drinking-glass neck as a template, while behind the motor he positioned a solitary 100watt bulb. When the device was plugged into the mains, the disc started rotating, and every time the hole came past the bulb, it allowed a brief glimpse of light to show out of the front of the cardboard disc. I think the only modification that he made was to add a further hole to the cardboard disc exactly 180 degrees from the first one; in this way the light looked like it was going on and off faster, as he could not alter the speed of the motor. If he could, I doubt very much that 45 rpm would have been fast enough, and so he was stuck with 78rpm. Anyway, I gave Billy the go ahead and told him that he could use the strobe at the very next booking as long as he did not overplay the idea. In other words, he was not to use it on every single song that we played.

Came the big day and the band launched into the last bracket of the night, something Billy had been waiting for. In those days, the last bracket was the highlight of the night, and so he had wanted to enhance the performance by leaving the crowd dumbstruck. Something he did nicely, because he waited until Ginger broke into a particular fast and fancy lead break on his guitar. The end result was that Ginger had to stop playing, as he could not see what he was doing. For a greater effect, Billy had killed the one and only 60-watt bulb, which was lighting up the stage from the back of the hall, thus leaving only the strobe light for Ginger to see what he was doing. If you can imagine, a strobe is really a light going on and off. During the times when it was off, there was no light on the stage whatsoever, and Billy's light was not flashing in microseconds as they do today. Later, Ginger told us that it looked like his hand was jerking up and down the fret board and he had not a clue where he was. Lucky for the rest of the band, it had no effect on us, as we did not look too closely at where our hands needed to be on the instruments. Anyway, it all turned out reasonable well; Billy continued to use the strobe on stage and promised that he would never use it again while Ginger was playing a solo. The whole exercise turned out to be a good idea as no other bands in our area had anything like it, so it gave us an edge on them.

Once while in a dressing room, or I should say an old cloakroom at the back of the hall, we were all treated to a laugh when one of the girls who had forced her way in acknowledged that we were a high-tech band. How's that for a band playing under a 100watt red sweet paper covered bulb and a further 100watt bulb that goes on and off every second. The mind boggled with what we might come up with next to improve our performance.

While we played in these old halls, we were constantly being irritated by very loud humming noises that seemed to come from our amps. At times, it was deafening, while sometimes it would die down when we moved our fingers across the strings. It was usually me that was always picking up shocks from my guitar, and over a short period of time I developed a small burn mark on my right wrist, where it lay on the bridge of my guitar. It worried me to such an extent that I went to the doctors, not knowing what was happening. Lucky for me, the doctor knew a little about electricity and informed me that a lot of these old village halls were not earthed correctly, and that the old wiring had deteriorated to such a state that maybe it had become unattached from the earth rod, which should be in the ground where the power entered the hall. On the question of only myself picking up the shocks, he told me that I was more susceptible to the electricity than the other members of the band and picked it up more easily. He suggested that we take an electrician along to the gigs with us and to check each hall out. However, that was out of the question, as we did not earn enough money to pay the roadie, let alone an electrician. What I did do was to have a word with an electrician at work and he gave me a couple of tips.

At each booking, I would be the first to pick up my guitar and to see if I could affect the hum coming from the amp as I touched the strings. I would then lay my wrist on the bridge, and if I thought I was receiving a shock, we would try and earth the hut before we played. One trick was to bare one end of a long single piece of wire and to wind it around the cold-water tap in the kitchen area. We would then pass the other end of the wire out of the window, twist it around a metal meat skewer, and drive it in the ground. You don't know what a meat skewer is? Well, it's something that butchers used to stick into a piece of rolled up meat to keep it together while on display in their shop window. I believe that today they use wooden ones, or sometimes use string.

This would usually cure most of the problems for us. In hindsight, it's amazing that we never burnt any of these old village halls to the ground; with all of the fiddling we got up to. Mind you, the wiring was usually one hell of a mess before we arrived on the premises.

I can still hear Cliff Richard singing 'Move It', a record I played whenever I visited the Panhandle café, something I did on a regular basis.

The Panhandle was positioned right in the middle of the high street, standing opposite the town's one and only cinema. It was a favourite hangout location for most of the young people who lived in the area. The Panhandle was where we perfected our teenage skills, which were to help us rebel against the authorities of the day, with the use of hindsight, unfortunately it included our parents.

Its walls held many good memories for me but, sadly, they are also interlaced with a few bad ones that life always manages to throw at us from time to time. This seems to be one of our biggest tests in life, and it is how we react to them that determine which path our lives will follow. It was within this closely confined environment which only catered for the young, that we learnt all the secrets of Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll.

Norman Stevens, a local businessman had bought the premises, wanting to attract and cash in on the young people and their newly found spending power. He had realised long before anybody else that they were going to be a force to be reckoned with in the very near future. Furthermore, he realised that they were going to have the potential to become the big spenders of the future, something that had not been possible up until that point in the world's development.

He converted the building from an old garage, and set it up with all of the then modern ideas that could be found in coffee bars throughout London. Its walls were padded so that the noise would not irritate the local residents living near or passing by, and painted it in the brightest of colours. One of the rooms in the cellar below the café bar became known as the Padded Cell and Norm, as he became known to most of his patrons, installed the very first jukebox that the town had ever seen. It was a Wurlitzer, and once again the idea had come from America. To our amazement, it held 100 records and cost sixpence a record or three plays for a shilling. We were just blown away; up until then we had only seen jukeboxes in the American films at the local Cinema. However, even at sixpence, it was still way beyond some of the young people's spending power. Whenever somebody tried to select a record, a small group of people would gather around them assisting them in their record choice.

This was also a period in time when the records became smaller. Having been known up until that point as 78's, they had now been reduced in size down to what became known as a 45. I dread to think how big a jukebox would be if it held 100 of the 78's, but I wouldn't mind betting that somewhere in America they had actually built one. It was an instrument that the band used constantly, in order to learn the latest songs that were being released, but not with our money I might add.

The café also introduced another first to the town, in the form of Coca-a-Cola, something else that had only been seen in the cinemas. Unfortunately, we could only taste its very sweet contents occasionally, as its price of one shilling prohibited us from drinking it on a regular basis.

Most of the young people who were working at that time had to give their parents a large proportion of their earnings to keep them, what was known as board and lodgings or keep for short, leaving them with only a few shillings a week, left over to spend.

It was always a struggle to make ends meet, especially if you wanted to keep up with the latest fashions of the day. Clothing was very costly, as I had found out when I bought my very first Teddy Boy suit and had to part with what I thought was the grossly overinflated price of £12 in order to stand out and looked good to the other young people of the town.

You might think that we were following the Americans in everything we did; after all, in those days we were known as the fifty-first state, what with jukeboxes, Coca-a-Cola, American music and leather jackets, all copied from the movies.

However, the Teddy Boy dress craze was something that was completely British, recycled back from the Edwardian days in the early part of the century. During those times it had been the favourite choice of the then King Edward and hence the name, Teddy being the nick name for Edward in those days.

The Padded Cell was also where the 'Convertibles' somehow managed to perform, despite its very close confines. At times there would be almost 100 people packed in, with some even sitting on the front of the very small wooden stage, to hear the music that we pumped out whenever we got the chance. Norman would charge the young people 6 pence each to come in and listen to us. We were given the entire door take, while he relied solely upon the drinks and food they bought upstairs to make his money.

The Padded Cell was where Maureen taught me how to jive to the Rock n Roll music of the day, something that became very useful for me whenever I wanted to use the Elvis wiggle while singing his songs on stage.

This was also the location where I penned my very first hit song, "Dog Day Afternoon," which went on to become a million seller for me, although it was not recorded or released for a couple of years. However, during all that time we had played it on a regular basis while on stage, and so it became second nature, every time we played it, it just got better.

The buying public knows me as Johnny Morris, although my real name is actually Jamie Spencer, and I think it went like this,

Came home from work the other day

Earned no money so received no pay

Working all the day and always to a plan

Who wants to be a working-class man?

It's been a dog day afternoon

It's been a dog day afternoon

I should have stayed in bed

It's been a dog day afternoon

Sometimes I wish that I were dead

Came home from work the other day

The neighbour and my wife had run away

The house was burnt and they had taken my car

They even smashed the neck off my old guitar

It's been a dog day afternoon

It's been a dog day afternoon

I should have stayed in bed

It's been a dog day afternoon

Sometimes I wish that I were dead

Came home from work the other day

Stopped for a beer, and some pool to play

It ended in a fight, over an argument

With me spending the night in an oxygen tent

It's been a dog day afternoon

It's been a dog day afternoon

I should have stayed in bed

It's been a dog day afternoon

Sometimes I wish that I were dead

Anyway, you all know the rest, no need for me to repeat myself.

Unfortunately, the cafe was also where we first started to experiment with drugs, and it all came about from the very fast pace of life that the band was trying to live up to. We were all still working during the daytime, while at nights we were practising, writing songs or playing gigs. Most of us were falling asleep on our feet. Until, that is, one of the young girls that frequented the Panhandle offered us a couple of tablets, after hearing us discussing the fact that we were too tired to go back on stage and play another bracket. She removed a small handkerchief from her handbag and slowly unrolled it, revealing a dozen or so white tablets. She then told us that her brother, a truck driver, used them to stay awake at work, and he called them speed. Well, it sounded as if our prayers were being answered. After all, that was all we wanted; to be able to stay awake for a little longer. Somehow, we never thought we were taking a drug; it was just a tablet to keep us awake for an extra couple of hours.

That night we all took a couple and were amazed at how good they made us feel. In fact we all agreed that we could have played all night on them. Lucky for us, we had taken the entire girl's supply, and so we were not going to be able to take anymore. However, it had turned out to be a fun experience that we all wanted to repeat the next time we played. Lucky for us, it was not to be, as the girl who had supplied us did not turn up at the next booking.

The drinking of Coca-a-Cola to wash down headache pills became a ritual that was based upon a rumour that the combination would give you a big kick, just like some of the pills that were being offered around at that time for large sums of money. I'm not sure if it worked or not, although a lot of people swore by the concoction. I took them myself but, at times I wondered if in fact I was imagining that I was on a high. I really don't know and nobody at that time seemed to know the answer either, but a hell of a lot of Coca-a-Cola and pills were consumed on dance nights. A few years later, we all learnt that Coca-a-Cola actually had cocaine as one of its secret ingredients, so maybe the kids of the day were onto something after all.

Skiffle music had passed us bye, and most of the bands in the country returned to their roots playing Rock n Roll music. The songs were also changing, as English singers and bands started writing and recording their own material. It was amazing just how many of them were finding success and having hit records.

Along with the other members of the 'Convertibles', I went to see Cliff Richard when he appeared at a nearby town of Ipswich, and his show blew us all away. As far as we were concerned, he was fair game to copy. To me, "Move it" was still the best song that he had released to date, although later as he became involved in films I thought his material became very weak and lovy dovy as I called it. He seemed to release a string of ballad type songs, as did Elvis when he went into the army. I have never been a lover of ballads. I am a rocker through and through and so I gradually weaned myself from the two biggest influences in my musical career so far.

At the Cliff Richard show, a young girl who was sitting in front of us and knew who we were became friendly and started talking. During the interval, as we were waiting for the main act to come on stage, she passed around some pink tablets and we were swept up in the heat of the moment. We had all thought that we were going to experience the same sort of thrill that we had gone through back at the Panhandle months earlier. However, we were sadly mistaken, because by the time we were about to head back home all of us became violently ill. However, none of us blamed the tablets at the time, thinking that we had all drunk to much beer, and so the incident did not put us off taking pills whenever they were offered. It got to the point where we were buying them from anybody who had them for sale. This was to cause a problem for us, although at the time we did not know it. Somehow, we trusted the people around us and, if they told us they were good stuff, we believed them. However, there are some unscrupulous people out there who would sell you their grandmother's heart pills if they thought they could get away with it. Therefore, with this in mind, it was a safe bet that a lot of the stuff that we and other young people of the day bought turned out to be bad for us, not just making us ill but, in some cases I would bet that they even killed a few people. As far as we were concerned speed was okay; it just kept us awake. The same with amphetamines, they were not a classic drug just something to make you feel good and speed you up, and on stage sometimes we need that.

It slowly became apparent that we needed a set of wheels to accept many more offers of band work that were being offered to us from venues outside our town. Furthermore, it was backbreaking work, pushing all of the gear around town on the old wooden builder's barrows that we had borrowed from JB's Father. At one time, we had almost destroyed some of the gear when one of the barrow's three feet high wooden steel-rimmed wheels fell off in the high street. On that occasion, we had to physically carry each item of our gear the remainder of the journey. JB managed to talk a bus conductor into allowing him to place his bass-speaker cabinet and amp on the entrance platform of a passing double-decker bus. However, he still had to carry it on his back the remaining quarter mile to the church hall where we were playing that night. Back at the crash site, a speeding car had tried to negotiate the corner where the cart had been abandoned with what I always laughed about and described as a flat tyre. Unfortunately, the driver had misjudged his speed and ended up driving right over the wheel that had fallen off, smashing a couple of its wooden spokes. Sadly for us, all of the cash we received from the gig that night had to be used to get the wheel and cart repaired before JB's Father found out. There was also a funny sequel to this story, when we later found out that all we needed to do was to lift the cart up and to push the wheel back on, and then to find a nail or something similar to poke through the axle shaft to hold the wheel on. It would have saved us a lot of long, torturous, backbreaking work lugging the gear around that day, and we might have made some money from the evening's labour.

Lucky for us, JB was working at one of the local garages as an apprentice mechanic and so, with his knowledge and some money that we all managed to club together; we went to inspect a van that had been advertised in the local Mercury weekly newspaper. It turned out to be a Bedford Doormobile with sliding doors for the driver and passenger. JB gave it the once over, pointing out to us lesser mortals, who had no idea what he was talking about, a few jobs that would need doing to make it roadworthy. Basically, he gave it the thumbs up and so we started the long arduous task of trying to screw the seller down to the lowest amount that he would take for it. To aid us in this task, JB kept pointing out lots of other potential problems that he had invented. He did such a good job of it that at one time I was not sure if we should buy it. From the way he was talking, we were about to purchase an assortment of problems that would cost a fortune to put right. In the end, I left it to JB and trusted him and his judgement, and he came through with the goods, sealing the deal for £35. We were also lucky that being able to drive was a requirement for his daytime job.

The first thing we did was to paint the name the 'Convertibles' along both sides of the van in bright red lettering. After all, we wanted everybody who saw the van to know who was riding inside. It felt like heaven, as we could put our feet up and ride in style to the bookings. At times, we all imagined ourselves as Royalty. Whenever we arrived or departed a venue, there was always an army of would be helpers, all clambering to carry our gear. So they could later brag to their friends that they were roadies, and had helped the fabulous 'Convertibles'. At times Billy our roadie became a little worried in case they stole his job away from him.

With our wheels all in place, we set about trying to conquer the bright lights of the neighbouring large town of Ipswich. In doing so, we picked up a completely new group of fans and friends, especially the female variety.

Sadly, I let my guard down and succumbed along with the other members of the band, and started dating the girls we picked up at each booking. I say sadly because I had thought a lot of Jennifer. I had always thought that we could have had a long term relationship. After all, she was the type of girl that I had always wanted to marry. I do not know why I let it happen, because I loved Jennifer so much. It wasn't that the other girls were better looking, because in many cases they weren't. Later, I remarked to Ginger more than once that I never did meet a better looking girl. As an excuse, I can only say that I was swept along like many others in the youth revolution that was taking place. The seeds had been sown for the swinging sixties to follow. In hindsight, I now admire those who did not succumb, as they became the true people who stood out in a crowd as being different. Unfortunately, I just went along for the ride, like many others. Maybe it was just a case of the grass always looks greener in the next field, I really don't know.

I was told later that the break up affected Jennifer so much that she almost became a recluse, not going out or mixing with other young people, and so I guess she took it quite hard. Especially as I never officially told her that I did not want to see her again. Although, if I'd have been given the chance, I guess in my drunken drugged up state I would have strung her along, just like all the other girls I was now playing around with. We just stopped seeing each other, while friends later told her what I had been up to and it almost brought her to a breakdown. Moreover, I was not in any condition to alter my decision.

As if to make amends to her, I wrote my second hit song especially for her, calling it "Missing you," although I was later informed that she only ever listened to it once, telling her friends that she never wanted to hear it again.

Missing me, Missing you, and all the things we used to do.

Of the nights we spent, in each other's arms.

Of the love we found, from all our charms.

Of kissing and cuddling, and the promises we made

Of our whirlwind romance, that would never fade

Missing me, Missing you, and of all the love I had for you

For that one crazy moment that I had no feeling

I made a mistake and for that I'm reeling

If you could forget and heal the pain

Maybe you could love me once again

Missing me, missing you, for treating you this way

As I hope and pray that one-day you will

Understand what I did, and bear no ill

I hope and pray that somehow, someway

True love will find us together one day

Well, you all know the rest. It's also a valued point that, by singing this ballad I had fallen into the very same trap that both Cliff and Elvis had experienced and not remained a true rocker, but that was to come much later.

The band went from strength to strength and I could not believe the sounds we were achieving. It was very professional and tight, to such a point that I decided to give up playing the guitar altogether and to become what is known in the trade as a front man. Now I could strut about on the larger stages that we were performing on, while swinging my legs around at every opportunity, and bending down to touch the girls who usually pushed up to the front of the stage. We had raised the bar a couple of notches and word soon spread around that we were a great live band to watch, although one of the main reasons was that I was becoming unpredictable and would do anything that came into my head, without first considering the consequences. However, the band was good about it and got to know exactly what I would do just before I did it, and in this way they could play to it and even emphasise the point and at times exaggerate a little to the crowd. It became a saying amongst us that any publicity is good publicity. It did not matter how bad the deeds were that we got up to, it placed the 'Convertibles' into the forefront of the young people's minds.

However, our womanising also had its drawbacks, as most of the girls who wanted to be picked up by the band had normal everyday boyfriends. Once the band had completed its performance and moved on, more than likely never to return to that area again, these girls would have to return to their normal boyfriends. With this in mind, we had many incidents that arose from enraged boyfriends all wanting to take it out on us. In the early days, we were okay while we were still on the stage. However, once we came down onto the dance floor, we were fair game for them to try to beat us up in front of their girlfriends, in doing so they would look the savour of the day. Later, as they became more irate, a couple of them got on the stage and in our trying to throw them off most of the gear became vulnerable. Lucky for us, nothing ever got broken and Billy became a type of bouncer for us. I think every one of us had been on the wrong end of the local marauding males at one time or another. At times, some even came in from other villages just to have a go at us. Sadly, the reputation that I had gained at school had not reached these out of the way places, as far as we were concerned we were out in the sticks.

We further inflamed the situation by allowing the girls to come into our so called dressing rooms before the show and during the breaks that we took. It certainly was not a place for the squeamish, and on the odd occasion that the boyfriend's gate crashed the room, all hell was let loose. However, we loved it and milked it for all it was worth. As long as we came out on top, we did not mind a good fight, although we often wondered how the girls faired the next day with their so called regular boyfriends. I am afraid we were all guilty of situations that developed, and when I say all that included the girls.

Once again, it was Billy who caught one of the worse beatings we became involved in, when JB found him beat up outside the dance hall after an argument with one of the local boys over Billy making eyes at his girlfriend. Sadly, we never learnt from this and persisted in playing around in search of what we described as a good night out.

Because of this incident, JB talked us into using two of his cousins, who were very big muscular looking guys, as bouncers, and so they accompanied us around for a couple of months. There was no way that we could afford to pay them on a regular basis. However, we did promise to pay them a bonus if and when they stopped a fight in the dance halls. It did not take us long to discover that they were stopping at least three or four fights per night, and to prove it, it was costing us a fortune. At times, they were taking home more money that we were. Until, that is, after watching them for a whole evening I realised that they were provoking the fights in the first place, and loving every minute of the experience. Needless to say, we soon knocked that idea on the head and sacked them, and the fights suddenly dropped off dramatically.

Out of the blue, we were offered a booking at the local American airbase, and grabbed at it with both hands. We all hoped that this would lead to bigger and better things for us, as there were several airbases within our area, and it was a completely untapped market. However, the booking did not go down to well with the audience, because we had to play in the airman's club that consisted of mostly coloured service personnel, and they were not interested in our brand of English rock and roll music. All they wanted to hear was their favourite tunes from back home in the States, most of which we had never heard of, and so we could not please them. Instead, we played all of the American hit songs that we did know, hoping that it would satisfy them. Unfortunately, we were sadly wrong and the night turned into an utter disaster for us. Then, once the alcohol kicked in, some of them wanted to get up on the stage and use our instruments, something we were not about to let them do. At one time, it looked like it was going to get out of hand and become ugly, until a guy who looked like he was in charge ordered them off the stage and told the audience to give us a break, that we had been hired to entertain the airmen and to show them what the music scene was like here in England, and that if they wanted to hear their favourite hit songs from America, they should go back to their barracks and listen to their record collections. We were glad to get out of that booking in one piece and most of us vowed that we would not bother to return in the near future.

At a booking in Ipswich, I picked up a young girl called Anne, who just happened to work at the local Churchman's cigarette factory. She started to turn up regularly at the bookings, with an old sweet paper bag full of tobacco that she had smuggled out of the factory for me stuffed inside her knickers. At that time, I was rolling my own cigarettes and so it was always gratefully received, although at times I wondered how long it had been concealed in its rather private place. The in joke around the band at the time was that I was smoking Camel brand of cigarettes and that it was made up from camel droppings.

Colin's brother, who was still playing in a jazz band, introduced him to smoking what became known as pot, and so it was not long before Colin then introduced the band to this little green weed. As we were all rolling our cigarettes at that time, it was easy to add it into our usual tinned tobacco, or in my case what I called my loose assorted knickers brand. At times, it took over our evening's playing as we were constantly under its influence and addiction, and it was an addiction, as we constantly wanted to smoke it. It also became an essential ingredient in my song writing and I was amazed at its powers of inspiration, although at the time the people around me probably thought it was a load of old rubbish. Dare I carry on mentioning that when we were not smoking we were popping pills, and coupled with drinking our bodies were experiencing a cocktail of drugs that would have normally dropped a horse.

Norman at the Panhandle was the first to realise the musical potential of the band and called me to one side for a chat. To my surprise, he offered to become our manager, telling me that he would do all of the organisation and arrangements for the band, so that we could concentrate solely on our performance. Sounded great to me, until I asked him, but what is it going to cost us. Norman laughed and told me nothing; as he could easily extort more money from each gig to pay for his cut, and in doing so we would all more than likely receive a little more. I can remember laughing at him and saying that he was a shrewd businessman. He then flattered me by telling me that if I agreed he would make me a star, and I needed no further encouragement. We did a deal right there and then, and I agreed that he would get an equal cut, from now on we would split the deal six ways. After all, as far as I was concerned he was going to earn his share, setting up the venues and doing all of the organising that I hated. That day we signed nothing, both agreeing on a handshake, and as far as we were concerned it was going to be binding for life.

As a band, we had to sit down and try to map out a future, and so I arranged a night at the Panhandle along with Norman. I then told the other members what had been agreed between Norman and me, and it was gratifying to see that they all took to the idea, and that I did not have to use a hard sell on them. Mind you, you did not have to be a brain surgeon to work out that Norman was going to be good for the band. However, there were a few things that we had to sort out, one of which was our daytime jobs. It had become evident to us all that eventually this subject would come up, because we were now playing at least three nights a week and it was becoming harder to work both. My foreman at the local iron foundry had threatened me about my late morning starts.

The big sticking point was JB who was tied up in an apprenticeship; his Father had always insisted that he got a trade behind him, as this Rock n Roll craze was not going to last. He kept saying that JB needed something to drop back on to when he was married and settled down. There was just no way that he could make a living out of playing a stupid guitar.

Our long term future plans were nearly destroyed the night Steve approached and told me that he had put one of his girl friend's in the club. She was pregnant and, as was the custom, he had to marry her so that the child had a legal Father. It was something that was forced upon the young people in those days by their patents, even if they were not in love with each other. It all sounded a little hypocritical really, especially when you consider how many of those parents had just been through the Second World War, spreading their seeds of fertilisation around like confetti. Many a serviceman had returned home to find that his family had increased in size while he was away, all the while keeping from his wife how many girls he had put in the family way while he worked his way across Europe.

A hastily arranged shotgun marriage was organised by the two families so that the community did not know what had happened, as this would have brought bad publicity to all who were involved. This was a laugh, because you did not have to be a brain surgeon to be able to count the months, to discover that this pregnancy had somehow only lasted about six of them. What stood out to the band members was that Steve was not in love with the girl, he did not even like her, and that deep inside he did not want to go through with it. However, the pressure from his family won over the day and it all went through, even to the point where the bride wore white along with a white veil.

The 'Convertibles' played at the wedding reception, ensuring that everybody at least had a good time even though we could feel the friction between both families as each blamed the other for the situation that their children now found themselves in. We all saw the bride and groom off at the local railway station as they departed for their honeymoon by the sea, with a stay at Great Yarmouth.

However, they were both home by the Wednesday evening, the marriage was completely over and there was to be no reconciliation. The band took the juice out of Steve; all reckoned that it must be the shortest wedding on record. Both families were furious and blamed each other for the breakdown, at times it got very heated, to such a point that Steve had to move out of his parent's house. We all helped him find some digs just up the road from the Panhandle in Temple Road, where he moved in with a little old lady who turned out to treat him like her son. At times, he reckoned that it was better than living at home, as he was only paying the same board and lodgings money as he had done to his own family.

While the band was having its flings with the young girls of the area, Billy the roadie had not been wasting time. Until that is, the day he was caught with a young girl in a derelict house by one of the local police officers. As if that was not bad enough, it turned out that the girl was only fifteen. Admittedly, she was only a couple of weeks short of her sixteenth birthday, but that fact did not stop the officer from filing charges against Billy. The whole incident just about drove him crazy, especially when we kept telling him that he would be locked up for what he had done and that the warders would more than likely throw away the keys. Then there were the prisoners who would take a liking to any new young looking inmate.

Looking back, I guess it was a crazy thing to say, because I believe that at one time he nearly committed suicide over the whole affair. Then a friend told him that if he joined the British Army there was a good chance that the judge would let him off. After all, it would save the country a fortune if he were in the Army for six years instead of prison. That is exactly what he did, and lucky for him the police dropped the charges and so he was able to keep a clean slate as they say. The only thing we did not like about the whole affair was that it left us without a roadie.

Somehow, Norman managed to talk us into playing at an English airbase even after we had told him of the problems that we had encountered at the American one. He just insisted that this time it would be different, as they would be an English audience and so we could stick to our normal show. To our surprise, he was right and we had a good time. The organisers had bussed in a couple of coach loads of local girls from the surrounding villages, and to cap it off, the beer was half the price to what we had been used to. That night we played some great music, most of us found new girlfriends, and we all got drunk for half the price. As if that was wasn't good enough, most of the airmen attending insisted on buying us beer whenever our glasses were empty.

Came the day when Norman announced to the band that he had just negotiated a big deal for the 'Convertibles' to spend a summer season at Butlins Holiday Camp near Skegness in Lincolnshire. None of us could believe the good news, it was great and not only that, it was from May right through to the end of September. Just imagine playing every single night for that amount of time, how tight the band would be by the time we returned. There would be no more lugging of gear around each night, because at Butlins we could leave it all set up and just climb on to the stage whenever we had to play. However, once the excitement started to die down, members started asking questions that involved them. JB had the worst fears, as he started to wonder what his Father was going to say about his job. Being away for five months meant that we would all have to give up our daytime jobs.

While JB sat in the corner contemplating his future, the rest of us were all firing further questions at Norman. What had been agreed was that in the afternoons and evenings we would be playing in a large ballroom. However, during the mornings, we would all become what are known, as Redcoats and we would have to help entertain the holidaymakers in whatever type of pastime we were allocated. It did not take Steve long to mention that half the camp would be made up of females, and that each week as one lot left the camp another fresh lot arrived. He went on to tell us that it meant that each week we could have a different girlfriend, and we would be paid to look after them and their needs. Jeremy added that Steve would need the money, if he were going to pay for the dozens of children that he might sire. He continued to tell him that he should keep it in his trousers, as it was starting to rule his life; otherwise it was going to be a costly holiday for the band. I could not help throwing in my two pennies worth by adding that he would get the band a bad name, to which we all laughed. Jeremy then added that we already had one.

There was a funny outcome to Steve's five day shotgun marriage, it turned out that the girl lost the baby and so they went through the whole wedding ritual and all of its problems and arguments all for nothing. In addition he had also gone through the break-up with his family for nothing.

JB caught us all off guard as he announced that he would have to drop out of the band. His Father had laid down the law and there was no way that he could defy him, he would have to finish his apprenticeship. He was sorry it had turned out this was, but it was for the better. He then wished us every success and told us that he would keep in touch. We all felt sorry for him, especially as he had been there right from the beginning, and now that we were about to move up a notch, there was a possibility that we might get to the top. The good times lay just a little further ahead, something he was going to miss out on after going through all of the bad times. Nevertheless he had made his decision and it was not to be for him, but he looked a broken man.

We picked up another bass player from an Ipswich area band known as 'Stew and the Strawberry's'. It did not take Richard Wilson, who we called Rick, many practice sessions to learn our material, and surprisingly he added to the sound because he sung very close harmonies along with me.

We arrived at Butlins Holiday Camp to the sounds of the Beatles singing "Love Me Do", which was blaring out from loudspeakers strategically placed all around the camp; it was a big hit at the time. The Beatles certainly changed the music scene, as we knew it, not only in England but also around the world. What they achieved helped us all, as English became the flavour of the year. It seemed that the whole world wanted to cash in on what became known as the Liverpool sound, and later as the British sound. Bands that had been struggling suddenly found themselves with recording contracts and national tours. The Beatles also helped change the way in which songs were written, produced, recorded and marketed. Up until then, only a few people manipulated what the public was going to hear, and they had dominated the song writing world since time began. New songwriters could not get a foot in the door, as these music moguls and their closed shop publishing companies controlled everything. If you did not go along with what they wanted, your songs were simply rejected, even if they were good. However, they usually managed to purchase the songs from the writers for small amounts of money before they kicked them out of their offices. These were then published in the company's name as being their songs, with no further royalties being paid to the original writer.

Up until the arrival of the Beatles, these companies had always been reluctant to publish other artist's material, unless some of their lesser quality songs were placed on the B-side of each record. In this way, when the money from the sales was divided up, the B-side received 50% of the profits, even though their song was not popular and had not attracted the record sale in the first place. If bands did not go along with this scam, their contracts were torn up. These publishing companies could not lose, as the whole exercise was a nice little earner for them. The Beatles wrestled all this away from these powerful moguls, but not without a long drawn out fight, to this day, the Beatles do not own the songs that they wrote, as others are becoming very rich on the proceeds.

Butlins was just as we had imagined it would be. It became one long five-month holiday. We all lived together in what looked like a very small one roomed bungalow that consisted of a room full of beds. For a wash or shower, we walked to the end of a long row of these bungalows to the washhouse. For meals, we ate in a very large dining hall that housed hundreds of people. There were so many people on the camp at one time that the meals were divided into two sittings. The camp also boasted half a dozen pubs, one of which had a total bar space of nearly a quarter of a mile, while hanging from the ceiling were hundreds and hundreds of model aircraft. Six ballrooms catered for every style of dance that you could imagine. There were four large outdoor swimming pools and two indoor heated ones, football fields, tennis courts, putting greens, indoor table tennis rooms and many small cafes that all had a jukebox for entertainment. For the 'Convertibles', this was a musical heaven. There was no need to practice, as we played every afternoon and evening. If we wanted to learn a new song, we would just go ahead make it up during one of the shows.

The owners had planned the place down to the last detail, even dividing the holidaymakers up, so that there were fifty percent each of boys and girls. The living quarters were all lined up in rows, with the ones housing the females overlooking the ones that housed the males. What with the girls and the beer, we were all in a musical heaven, and we were being paid to enjoy ourselves. Although I must add that we were not receiving the large amounts of money that we had all imagined would come our way. However, we all agreed that it was worth it, knowing that by the end of September we were going to be red hot as a band.

Before May was out, we were oblivious to the outside world, having dropped into the camp routine, which saw us under the influence of alcohol and pep pills for most of the time. Because we were the band, the girls seemed to flock around us at every opportunity. We had the pick of the bunch as they say, and there was no chance that we would annoy their boyfriends, as most of them were single or had left them behind. This was what attracted the young to Butlins holiday camps in those days. The boys went to pick up the girls, while the girls went to be picked up by the boys. However, the big bonus for us was that each week, as the holiday camp had a turnaround of holidaymakers, it presented the band with a completely new line up of girls for the next week. With our contract lasting for twenty weeks, this gave us one hell of a choice.

In July, Norman turned up at the camp with a large smile on his face, as he proceeded to give us the good news that he had managed to get us a recording deal. After persuading the camp to give us one day off, by telling them that we would be recording stars and so it would be good for their publicity. We all headed to the Regal recording studios in Regents Street London.

As it turned out it was not quite what we had expected, as it was only an audition, a trial to see if we were good enough to record at a later date. We were only allowed to record four tracks of other people's material and were given only four hours' recording time. We were not allowed to record any of my original songs, some of which I had written months earlier in the Panhandle.

We chose what we thought might grab the technician's attention and got stuck in. As the Beatles were in almost every position in the hit parade at that time, we choose a couple of their songs, "Please Please Me" and "Love Me Do", with myself playing the harmonica that Colin had lent and taught me how to play back at the holiday camp. I believe the other two numbers were "Shaking All Over" by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, one of our favourites at that time, and the Elvis classic "All Shook Up". There was no denying that Elvis was still very much revered in the charts, even though the music styles were changing

We left the studios feeling a little dejected, knowing that we could have played better if given a second chance. However, in those days there were not many second chances. We had all set up in one big room, with just a couple of small screens around the drummer. Each song was taken in just one take and so any mistakes were left in, and unfortunately there were many because of our nervousness. Norman calmed us all down by telling us that it was just a test and that if we passed we would be back to do it properly the next time. However, I was not sure that we would be back, especially after I saw Norman and a couple of the boffins arguing with each other in the control room. When I asked him what was wrong he just brushed it off, telling me that it was just business. The other members of the band did not help the situation as they were constantly joking and messing around. At one time, a secretary had brought us some coffee and a plate of sausage rolls into the room. It all ended up as a bit of a bun fight with the sausage rolls being thrown at each other, leaving one hell of a mess in the studio. Once the recording was over, Norman saw us off on the return trip to the camp as we were supposed to be playing that night in the main ballroom.

As we drove out of London, we were all in pretty good spirits and larking about. That was one thing about this band, we all got on and enjoyed each other's company, and fun was always the order of the day. We knew we had done badly in the studios but, as far as we were concerned, we just picked ourselves up and got on with life. We needed nobody to tell us how to live our lives and so we lived it to the full, and we had worked all that out for ourselves.

Halfway to Skegness we were all hungry and dry and so we persuaded Rick, who was driving, to find a café and pull over so we could stretch our legs. At the time, we were passing through a small very old English town with very narrow streets, where the footpaths were also quite narrow. Rick spotted a cafe and asked everybody if it would do as he pulled into the kerb to park. He then slid the door back and jumped out, straight into the path of a thirty-ton truck that was overtaking our parked vehicle at great speed. It was all over in a split second and left him impaled onto the front of the truck twenty metres further up the road where it had finally come to a halt. It happened so fast and there was nothing that we could do to help him. He must have been dead within seconds as he hit the vehicle with such force. We were all still sitting inside the van, dumbstruck at what had just happened.

We had to remain in the town with the police for the remainder of the day as they worked out the sequence of events. I could not get in touch with Norman as he was driving back to the Panhandle, so I just left a message with his secretary about what had happened. When we did get on our way back to the camp I drove. However, there was none of the usual fun in the air. We were all in a state of shock, wondering what the hell we would do next. We did not arrive back at the camp until after midnight and so we all went straight to bed. It was left to me to go and see the camp manager the following morning, to sort out what we could do. As far as he was concerned, it was business as usual, he put us in touch with a local group and we borrowed their bass player for a couple of nights until we worked out what we would do next. Lucky for us he was good, but somehow the songs did not sound quite as good as when Rick played, and I missed the harmonies that he sang along with me.

Sadly, none of us went to Rick's funeral, held by his family back in Ipswich, although we sent a very large wreath and all signed a card that went with it. Later, I wrote to his family, explaining how sorry we all were, and that we had all got on so well together. They never answered the letter and I just let it go, not wanting to prolong their agony.

Norman came to the rescue, when he rang and informed the band that JB was on his way to rejoin the band. Norman had approached him to see if he could help out. Lucky for us, since he had left he had not slept at nights, as he imagined that he had let his one and only chance of fame and fortune slip from his grasp. He had also spent countless hours arguing with his Father over the decision that he should finish his apprenticeship. It had come to a point where they were not even talking to each other, and JB had left home feeling bitter and disappointed that his five minutes of fame had been taken from him. When Norman explained what had happened to Rick, it only took him a couple of seconds to agree to rejoin the band. He later delighted in handing in his notice at the local garage where he was working. He had wanted to tell them to stuff the job but, at the last minute, he decided against it just in case he needed a job later in life, still thinking of his Father he thought better of burning his bridges behind him.

The band greeted JB with great excitement, as we knew that he would fit in without too much trouble, as he knew our repertoire. We had added a couple of new songs but it would not take him long to work it all out, although I did ask him to start singing a few harmonies behind me, as Rick had done. It did not take him long to drop back into the groove along with the rest of the band and to treat it all as a nice long holiday.

During the nights, the camp security staff, known as Blue Coats, patrolled the endless rows of sleeping accommodation units. Their main task was to make sure that the campers stayed in their own beds. However, they were easily persuaded to turn a blind eye, especially if money was involved. As we were working on the camp, we were allowed to do more or less as we liked, as long as we were discreet while we did it. When we all finished work we would have a few drinks, while introducing our new girl friends for the evening, working out who was sleeping with who, and where. Sometimes it became a little complicated, when our chosen girlfriend had roommates who did not agree with what was going on. On the other hand, even our own sleeping quarters were full of courting couples. During these occasions Colin and I, along with our girlfriends used to take a blanket and pillow and sleep in the heated swimming pool building where we had the place to our selves.

The 'Convertibles' were the main attraction on the camp and we played in the two biggest ballrooms. Even so, the camp's entertainment was boosted two nights of the week, when outside bands were brought in as extra treats for the campers. This was good for us, as it gave us a chance to see other bands at work, so that we could compare each other and in some instances maybe copy material. However, it had its down points because, as we could copy their songs, so they could copy ours.

The one good thing that came out of it was that we saw what was going on in the outside world, and we saw some good bands during those months. One that stands out was "Marty Wilde and the Wildcats," they had a great show, as did "Rory Storm and the Hurricanes" from the Beatles' hometown of Liverpool. Their show impressed us so much that the other members of our band wanted to copy it. I had to explain that if we did, then it would take away our originality. Up until then, our show had developed from what we wanted to play; we had copied very little from other bands, other than the actual songs. I had to explain to them that you did not get far in this world being an exact copy of something else. If we were going to the top, it would only happen if we came up with something original, which was why we always did our own versions of the songs that we copied, we did not take a song apart in order that we might be able to play it note for note as the original record sounded. However, in the beginning this had all come about because we were simply not talented enough to be able do that. We had just played it as we thought it sounded on the record, and that included many wrong chords. Anyway, we liked it that way and so did our audience and that was what mattered. Later, whenever we were interviewed we would tell the journalists that it had all been planned that way, and that we thought the song need the new chords to make it sound better. I could not believe that they swallowed the story and that it was printed. Furthermore, it was never challenged by the so called music critics of the day. This proves my point that, if you say it with conviction most people will believe anything.

Our time at the holiday camp was musically good for the band as we became very tight and at ease with an audience. If our earlier times at the Panhandle had been our apprenticeship, then Skegness was where we perfected our playing by stamping our own little bit of authority on to the act. Playing to different audiences from around the county had proved that nationally we were appealing. We also learnt how to handle and manipulate a crowd, and no matter what problem or disaster happened to us on stage, we always had an answer and managed to squirm out of it.

We also used it as a time to let our hair down and to unwind. The holiday atmosphere was kind to us and we took full advantage of it at every opportunity. One night, after we had finished playing and we were a little the worse for wear because of the drinks, Ginger and I gave the campers something to remember us by when we went to the larger of the outside swimming pools and gave everybody a diving display. Mind you, we were fully clothed at the time. The campsite rules forbade swimming after dark. By the time we had climbed to the top diving board six times, we must have had a crowd of nearly 3000 people all standing around clapping and cheering us. I remarked to Ginger that it was possibly the biggest crowd that we had ever performed in front of to date. Then, just before the last dive we saw the camp Blue Coats running to the side of the pool to arrest us. Therefore, we hatched a little plan between us, where we would both dive side by side, landing together by the side of the pool but curling up in a ball just before we hit the water so that we made one hell of a splash, completely drenching the Blue Coats. The crowd then moved forward, pushing them into the pool, and pulled Ginger and I out, so that we could beat a hasty retreat into the crowd and escape being told off and possibly being sacked by the management.

Unfortunately, there was one big downside to our musical success, because of the 'I don't care, try anything attitude', the band was having problems with our drug taking, which up until now had only involved pills and grass. Towards the end of our stay at Skegness, Colin became the first real victim of our chosen way of life. He had been experimenting and became the first in the band to become addicted to the stuff. He had kept it from most people but we could read the signs and we knew it would get worse rather than better. The only way he would have kicked the habit was to completely drop out of the way of life that we were living, as it constantly attracted the bad side of a world in which we were moving around in. In order that we might keep running at the pace of life that we had chosen, we needed that little extra something that seemed to perk us up for the task. The taking of drugs just seemed to pick you up, so that you became the hyperactive type of person that was needed to live the professional musician's way of life. The funny thing was that, as long as he was high, it did not affect his playing ability; in fact most of us thought that he played better. However, it was a different story if he was on a downer and looking for his next shot. This was no problem as there were a handful of local guys who used to climb the camp security fence each night to sell whatever we wanted.

Most of the campers, who were taking the stuff, would bring it with them as they were only at the camp for one week. It seemed to be carried around quite openly, as most of the police did not know what it looked like or in the case of grass what it smelt like.

If you befriended these people, usually they were very willing to share a little with you so that when they went home they could tell all their friends that they had shared the stuff with a pop star. It was everybody's delight to be able to tell their friend that they knew a rock star, and even more that they shared a little grass with them. As with all addicts, it is hard to tell them that they have a problem; to them they are quite sane. It's all the other people in the world around them who have the problem and all they want to be able to do is live their lives as they want to, even if it is a road to self-destruction. We knew Colin had a problem, and that there was a chance that we might end up the same way. Nevertheless, there was no way that we were going to give up our way of life, which included pill popping and smoking grass.

By the time we all arrived safely back home, we had already become legends and heroes to the town's young people. We were now famous professional musicians who had taken the world by storm. As many of them had idolised other rock stars of the day, now they looked upon us in the same light, even though we had not had a hit record, and after all, we had only been playing at a small seaside resort town. However, to these people we were stars and anyway we were the first band from this area that had ever played professionally. To the band, the whole thing was totally out of all proportion, although we did enjoy and soak up the publicity.

When we visited Norman at the Panhandle, the first thing we all wanted to know was how the recording session went and when were we to be signed up. His reply disappointed us; as he went on to tell us that he was still waiting to hear back from the record bosses. However, he had some other good news for us and proceeded to tell us that we were signed up to undertake a national tour in a week's time, after we had some time off. He had bribed somebody in the Butlins organisation to give him information regarding where most of the holidaymakers came from. It turned out that apart from London, or the Smoke as we called it, a large proportion of them came from the northern working class areas. Norman had then sat down with another promoter and worked out a tour that took in a few of the larger towns in the North as well as London, so that we could cash in on our popularity at Skegness. After all, the campers would have remembered the band name, and might like to take their friends along to show them what they missed by not holidaying with them. It all sounded great to us, at least this time we would be able to see other parts of the country.

The tour was to take in over forty venues, with us playing at least six nights a week, and so Norman had lined up a full-time roadie for us. Dave Allen came well recommended, having moved to the town with his parents from London where he had worked with a couple of other bands in the past. He was a good guitarist in his own right, and so he would be a good person to have around, to set up the guitars as well as the gear.

Dave was also a little bit of an inventor, usually coming up with ideas that enhanced our act. Within just a couple of days of joining us, he approached me with an idea to flood the stage with what looked like smoke. Until then, these sorts of effects had only been seen on the television. Without asking him for too many details, I told him to give it a try and we would pay for it, as long as it did not cost too much money. Within just a few days, he amazed us all with a brief demonstration out the back of the Panhandle Café. Unfortunately, we were not as impressed the first time that he used his little idea on stage.

It consisted of a frying pan sitting on top of a very small army style tin stove and was heated by a fuel block, the type used while the soldiers were on exercise or active service. It was safe, but at times it looked a little dodgy. Anyway, at the given time in the show when he wanted to make smoke, Dave would flick a small amount of cooking fat from a small plastic container that he had made up into the middle of the by now red hot frying pan. Then, as he stood behind the pan and the big cloud of grey smoke start to build up around him, Dave fanned the smoke with a piece of cardboard in the direction of the band playing on stage. It was a great effect, although after just a few minutes of it we were all starting to cough and splutter until the smoke thinned out, only to be greeted by another fresh cloud of smoke that suddenly appeared from the side of the stage. It did not take long before the whole dance hall was filled with the horrible smell of burning oil. Added to that, it usually hung to our clothing and during the intervals we had to all go outside in the fresh air to try and get the horrible smell off us.

One of our fans made the remark that at times we all smelt like burnt hot dogs. Even the fans copped a lot of flak from their parents, when they returned home smelling like a Barbeque, not to mention the couple of times that the dance organisers called out the local fire brigades, and were told off for wasting their time. Mind you, the fire officers were not impressed when they discovered the source of the smoke. However, we continued to let Dave use his little invention but only on the bigger venues, while telling him to go sparingly on the oil and the number of times that he used the damn thing during the night's show.

However, before we set off on our first tour of the country, Norm asked us to play one gig at the local American airbase where we had first experienced an American audience. Before we could tell him that there was no way we were going back to be humiliated by that lot, he butted in to tell us that this time it was at the Rod and Gun Club, and so we would be playing to a completely different audience. He went on to tell us that we would be doing him a favour, as he'd promised a friend who ran the club that we would play for them.

Reluctantly, we agreed and started the night expecting trouble just like we had experienced in the Airmen's club. However, this time the venue was a lot more subdued and we were allowed to play our usual show unhindered, although I might add that we had to drop our volume levels down by several notches. The only thing that worried us was that every time somebody came up and asked for a request it was always for a country and western number, and we knew none. It seemed that every person attending that night just wanted to hear a Jim Reeves song, and I did not have a clue who the heck Jim Reeves was. However, we were all introduced to him during our breaks from the stage, when the jukebox in the corner sang out an endless stream of his songs. Furthermore, every other one just happened to be "Put Your Sweet Lips a Little Closer to the Phone". By the time we played our last bracket of the night, I think we all knew every single word to the song. To the point that, when we reluctantly let one of the American guys get on stage to sing it, we let him start singing on his own, and then gradually one by one we all managed to get in and play something quietly behind him. It turned out to be quite a nice rendition and at the end, as the audience kept applauding, the guy sang another couple of verses. We did not mind as it was almost the end of the evening and at least we had ended on a high note.

However, Norman kept one more little secret from us right up until a couple of days just before we departed on our tour. We had all gathered in the Panhandle to make the last minute adjustments to our departure date and to work out a route across the country, when he called us all together and gave us the good news that the following day our first record was to be released. Regal records had decided to release all four tracks on what was known then as an EP (Extended Player) 45 records. I could not believe the excitement in the room, as everybody tried to talk at the same time, all asking every conceivable question on what would happen next. Then, to add a little icing to the cake, Norman produced a small cardboard box containing copies of the disc, and we were all given three copies each. We were all on top of the moon, believing that we had made it in the record business. However, we still had to sell a million copies before we would be known as stars outside our hometown.

Later that day we all went to our local record shop to sign copies of our brand new record as they were sold to what we thought was an eagerly awaiting public. However, that turned out to be a bit of a disaster for us, because word had not spread of its release and there had been no publicity by the shop owner. Therefore, reluctantly we signed a couple of dozen, so the shop owner Mr Higgs could sell them later. Boy that was a sock in the eye for us all and brought us down to earth with a bang. I can still remember saying at the time that one minute you're up and the next minute you're down.

The next day we drove halfway across the country to Birmingham to play the first gig of the tour. We all had great expectations about what to expect, and so we were all bitterly disappointed with the first booking when we were greeted by the sight of a very small church hall that looked like it could house only 100 people. Still, it was a booking and we were being paid relatively good money at £2-10 shillings each a night.

However, the gig turned out to be a good one, as we played to a full house and that is always good. The timber walls and the density of the crowd absorbed our sound, with the result that our music sounded great. Not only that, as we stood up on the stage above everybody we could watch the seething mass gyrate to the sound of our music, which seemed to go down well. There was not enough room for them to jive or to swing around dancing, and so most of them just watched our act while they clung onto their partner; I wonder why.

Just as Norman had predicted, there were a couple in the audience who had seen us at Butlins earlier in the year. I wasted no time in telling them of our record release, at every opportunity I would have thought that by the end of the night they might have been fed up with me talking about it. What the band liked most that night was the introduction at the beginning, when the MC announced us as coming direct from a tour of the Butlins Holiday Camps and as having a hit record, which were all lies but then isn't the whole industry just one big lie? If you want to make it big, you have to milk it for everything you can get. If you have to tell a few little white lies on the way, well so be it, as long as they're not great big whopping black ones. Nevertheless, as I have said before, with the change in attitudes of the young people around the world, any publicity was turning out to be good publicity. It gets you in front of the public via the newspapers, and then they want to see you in the flesh just so they can tell their friends that they have seen you. It was fast becoming a strange sort of industry, but I for one was lapping it all up and wanting more. I have always laughed at the press, who constantly make up stories to sell to papers by chopping down somebody they dislike. When, in actual fact, by placing the person they are assassinating on the front page, they are giving them plenty of free publicity that the person can milk for his own benefit, even if it's only to say to a sympathetic public that they are being crucified. At least they will become household names and remembered, and that's what most of us are trying to achieve.

In order to satisfy the public's appetite to be shocked, we would dream up more and more stupid pranks and outrageous things to do, to shock our audience. The day I stripped off my shirt while on stage was a good example. Up until then, it was just not done, and so I was splashed across the front of the local newspaper. However, it was too late for the young of that town to come and see us, as we had already moved on to the next town.

We visited most of the larger towns and cities in the northern part of England and Yorkshire. However, we only played in small venues and not the larger theatres that we had all expected. Once we got over the initial disappointment, we let our hair down and got on with it, enjoying our success even if it was to a smaller audience. At least we were filling the venues. There was nothing worse than playing in a big theatre to a handful of people. After a time, it all started to blend in and at times we had no idea where we were or where we were going to next. It was only incidents that seemed to jog my memory. I'm still totally lost as to where and when they took place.

One day while we were on the road between venues, we stopped at a roadside transport café for some food. In those days, transport cafes were the only means of refreshment while on the road, and if the car park was not full of trucks, then it meant that the food was rubbish and you did not stop. Not like today, when you are given a dainty little cup or a plastic container holding your tea, which has a silly looking teabag, containing only tea dust, draped over its side. In those days, you received a large mug full to the brim of beautiful tasting tea that had been brewed for a couple of minutes. We would couple this with a plate of bacon and eggs all smothered in a thick layer of grease, so that it slid down into your stomach all nice and smooth. The grease was then soaked up by two thick slices of toast that were in turn washed down by the mug of tea. Those places were an eater's paradise and we enjoyed its delights as a ritual every morning.

Unfortunately, the accommodation for us was appalling and at times non existent, and so we learnt to grab whatever sleep we could, and from wherever possible, even if it included the all night cafes or the back of our van. This was a way of us saving a little money, because we were expected to pay for our own nightly lodgings and food out of the £2-10s that we were earning from each show. A couple of times we talked the organisers of the venues into letting us sleep in the dressing room, so we could get an early start in the morning, driving to the next venue miles away. Alternatively, if that was not possible, we would sleep in the van parked out the back of the hall. I might add that it is not very comfortable during the cold winter months, with Dave adding a further discomfort to us all, as he was constantly passing wind all night and he always smelt foul. Therefore, we would be kept awake by his antics, followed by the succession of remarks that we all made about his well being.

If the accommodation was bad it was nothing compared with what we were expected to use as dressing rooms. Our favourite saying at the time, that we would all repeat as we walked into the next shocking dressing room, was 'Well lads, we have finally made it to the big time'. A couple of times we were expected to change in the toilets, and once out the back of the hall while it was snowing. I have often wondered what Elvis would have told the promoters if he had been with us.

The transport cafes were also where we met up other bands that were travelling the length and breadth of the country just like ourselves. Some of the bands would tell us of other well known transport cafes where bands stopped regularly and met up with each other.

One band we met up with on a couple of occasions was 'Sniff and the Snuffles', and we did not like them. They were big headed and let it be known to everybody that they were good. However, you did not have to be a rocket scientist to work out that they did not even have a record contract, and so JB let them have it with both barrels. Unfortunately, it all got very heated and out of hand and a couple of blows were exchanged, one of which caught JB on the jaw and knocked him over. Although it was all over within seconds, to JB's disgust they continued belittling him. In the end, I grabbed JB's arm and pulled him away, telling him we were about to leave.

As we walked out of the café Jeremy spotted a table near the door where six very well built army guys were enjoying a hot mug of tea. JB walked up to the servicemen and politely informed them that, while he did not wish to offend them, he felt it only right that they should know that the, group of young people sitting at the table over by the counter was telling everybody that you guys were a bunch of queers. He then left before the servicemen had time to respond to his accusation. As he walked through the door, he turned to see all six servicemen heading in the direction of the 'Sniff and the Snuffles' table. Outside, he told Dave to drive on, as he did not want to witness a murder or to get involved. I could not help laughing and telling everybody that once the servicemen started punching them on the nose, they would all have the sniffles.

They were the only group that we did not like, and from then on we gave them a wide berth. Most of the groups were good company and we all swapped ideas and stories of the venues where we played. I guess, in a way, this was just a continuation of the long drawn out apprenticeship that we were all serving.

The young of the day always moaned about serving a long five year apprenticeship in their chosen profession, when in actual fact most bands would spend twice that time trying to learn the ropes, while most would never get any further in the music industry, falling by the wayside and into obscurity, ending up as builder's labourers on the local housing projects, with only stories to tell their mates. At least they'd had a go, and there was always that slight chance that they might just have made it. Our parents used to tell us that we stood more chance winning the football pools and that had odds of 5 million to one, or so they told us.

It was also surprising that quite a few of the people attending the bookings had in actual fact seen us at Butlins, which amazed us all. After all we had all thought that Norman was dreaming when he came up with the idea. England is a big place and who was going to remember us. However, we were finally reaping the rewards of Norman's business brain while at the same time he was earning his cut of the proceeds.

At one venue, we were sitting in the dressing room, if you could call it a dressing room, a small room at the back of the stage. Most of us had a girl with us, while I had one sitting in my lap, when in walked two girls, one of whom I recognised right away, although it was not her large Bristol's that caught my eye but her face. Bristol's being the slang word for breasts, from an old sailors saying of 'Ship shape and Bristol fashion'. She had been one of the nicest girls I had been with, but had not slept with while at Butlins. How could I ever forget 'What's her name', I found myself saying jokingly, while at the same time I was clicking my fingers as if trying to remember it. We all laughed as I jumped up, brushing the girl aside from my lap, and gave her a nice big hug and kiss. The other girl had spent a night with JB and so she received the same greeting from him. After reminding me that her name was Susan, we got into a conversation as she told me what she had been up to. She also told me that she had read about us in the local newspapers and that she had never stopped thinking of me, this made me feel good, but before I could say any more we were all ordered back on stage by the MC for the night.

After the show I met up with Susan and we spent some time with each other, although we did not sleep together. There was something about her that I liked very much. I had met her on the very last night of her stay at Butlins and so we had no time to take the relationship any further. Now that I had found her once again, I wanted to be able to see more of her, but the tour was going to get in the way.

Susan was sending out the same signals to me and so we arranged that she would travel to a couple of the venues that were not too far away, so she could see me when we were in town. This was fine by me, as it would give us time to see if we could make a go of a relationship. Our tour had not been arranged so that we worked our way around the country in a nice neat pattern; instead, we criss crossed the country all over the place so that we could fit in with the venues when they had a free night. This meant that we would be in Hartlepool's on three more occasions, and then I would be able to spend some prime time with Susan. If we were lucky, we might be able to be on our own for a few hours. As I kissed her good night, I had that little twinge of something in my stomach that told me I liked her very much, and for once sex was not my priority with this girl.

As the tour progressed so did the sale of our record, surprising all of us. On one occasion when Norman turned up, he brought us confirmation that the sales figures for the month had topped ten thousand. According to him it was unheard of. He also confided in me that he was trying to manipulate the British pop charts, by fiddling the sales figures. This made me a little suspicious of his claims of ten thousand, although he crossed his heart and told me that they were genuine.

Norm, as I had started calling him, had found out where all the shops that the chart people used for their sales figures count were based. He intended buying large amounts of records from these vendors and in doing this he hoped he would be able to get the 'Convertibles' in the charts. I told him that he was playing with our futures and asked what would happen if he were caught. He just laughed and told me to leave it all up to him. He was going to get different people to buy half a dozen records at a time for him. He would then use these records to further promote us by giving some of them away at venues where our sales were not doing so well.

To our amazement, we were awoken one morning by Dave waving a newspaper and shouting that we had finally made it, that we were in the charts. As we all tried grabbing a corner of the newspaper, he turned to the relevant page and pointed to the number seventeen spot in the chart and there we were, 'Johnny Morris and the Convertibles', we had arrived. As far as we were concerned from now on there would be no stopping us, it was number 1 here we come.
Chapter 3

## TOP OF THE POPS

Unfortunately, our very first record did not reach the top of the charts, to become our first long awaited number one hit, as everyone had expected. Instead it stalled at position number nine, before dropping slowly backwards and out of the charts completely. However, it had hung around for almost seven weeks and as far as we were concerned, that was pretty good for our very first attempt. Even though it made quite a bit of money for some people, the band never received a single penny of the revenue it generated. It was all explained to us by Norm that after deducting the cost of the recording and his manipulation of the charts, he had actually lost money on the whole deal.

However, the record release and its number nine position in the charts increased our exposure and popularity to a record buying public that was gaining strength by the day. In order for Norm to take full advantage of this, he brought in a couple of friends to assist with the management side of the band. He had been complaining for some time that, as we became household names, it was becoming too much for one man to handle.

Unfortunately, we had to pay for their services out of our cut of the so called profits. The only problem with that statement was that the band was not making a profit. Somehow, Norm had worked it so that his 1/6th share was deducted before the band expenses were paid for, including any expenses that Norm had run up connected with the band. Then there was the roadie and now these two new guys. The remainder was then equally divided amongst the band members, leaving us with very little to live on. At that time it looked like we were going into the red with every gig that we played, and so we had to sleep in the van whenever possible. We did not let our loyal fans know, otherwise I'm sure they would have laughed at us; most were under the impression that we were all millionaires since the release of our first record. However, it did become common knowledge within the industry that we were sleeping in the van most nights, and it became known as the "Bedford Hotel".

Once, while I was in a shop waiting to buy a newspaper that just happened to have us on the front page, I could not help listening to a conversation between the proprietor and another customer, as they both looked at the picture of the band. They were obviously talking about us, but had little idea what they were talking about. However, that fact did not stop them from constantly saying that we were all millionaires and had more money than sense, adding that this money had been thrown at us for doing absolutely nothing other than make a record. The other guy then replied that we would probably spend it all on drugs; such was the public's perception of rock and roll bands at that time. I felt like joining in with the conversation by giving my side of the story, but I could not be bothered, and anyway I doubt very much whether they would have believed me. Once people have made up their minds, it's hard to get them to change it. I began to wish that I had never heard their conversation in the first place. Although I must add that at times we deserved the tag they placed on us, because of the life style we choose to lead, and to not worrying if it became public.

Somehow, we allowed our new management team to talk us into purchasing more powerful amplification, to give us a professional sound in the larger venues that we were now being asked to perform at. These bigger venues meant that more money was passing hands amongst our management and the venues, but it did not seem to be making its way into our bank accounts. However, we did like the idea of replacing our VOX AC15 amps for the new VOX AC30s, mainly because we were lacking drastically in the volume department, compared with other bands. It was something we had wanted to do for a long time, knowing full well that the Shadows had used them, and if they were good enough for the Shadows then they were good enough for the Convertibles. We also decided to purchase a new VOX AC100 PA (Public Address) amplifier that consisted of two columns cabinets with four 8-inch speakers in each column. They also had a nice chrome back support that allowed us to angle the speaker in the direction of the fans, so it threw the sound above their heads, to improve the vocals. However, we went deeper into debt as we all increased the loans that our parents had signed for us the year before.

Once again, it was arranged for us to tour the North of England, only this time we took in many different venues, hoping to spread the word while trying to increase our popularity amongst the natives. Unfortunately, this time we picked up some more bad press that always seemed to follow rising stars popularity. Because we were now seen as successful recording stars, whenever we hit a town we were invited to the local record shops, to sign autographs while trying to bump up future record sales. I might stress that all of these visits were at our own expense; we were told by our management team that we would reap our rewards in future theatre tickets and record sales, something that we were not seeing a lot of at that time.

Usually, the local press would be there to report on the event for the town's people. During one such occasion, we were mobbed by almost one hundred teenage girls, all trying to grab our clothes and touch us. At one time, it became a nightmare with all of the pushing and shoving, which resulted in a couple of the shop windows being broken. As was usual, we had egged everybody on in a fun sort of way but, as we saw the situation deteriorating and getting out of hand, we tried to back out. However, we need not have worried because the local press later re-sold the story on to the national newspapers in London, and by the next morning we were on the front pages of a couple of the national tabloids.

By now, our parents and the townspeople back home were all feeling a little dejected and left out of our success, and started knocking us saying that we were only a one hit wonder band and that we would soon be home, dragging our little tails behind us. It must have been the first time that someone explained to me the tall poppy syndrome, the chopping down of successful people who had made it to the top by their own ability, while the people doing the chopping down would have given their right arm to have been in that very same position. I often wonder how they would have felt being character assassinated by me, but I guess that's another story.

However, what hurt us the most was the night that Dave was driving us back from a venue to a bed and breakfast that had been arranged for us in the town of Concert. Most of us had dozed off trying to grab a little hard earned sleep after the rigours of a very long day, when we were all awakened by the van swerving around on a very wet slippery road as Dave tried to regain control of its handling. We had been driving on a narrow unlit country road, and as we came around a corner he had spotted something lying in the road. However it was too late; as he swerved to miss whatever it was, he ran over it and we all felt the bump. By the time the van had stopped, we were about forty meters up the road. Ginger jumped out and ran back as Dave tried to reverse the van so he could light up the area. Being on a blind corner, we were placed in a bad situation if another vehicle were to fly around the corner just as we had.

Dave parked the van as near to the side of the road as possible. Ginger started shouting at us, we had just run over somebody who had been lying in the middle of the road. We all knew that you are not supposed to move anybody who has been run over, but we had to as he was lying in the middle of the road. We were all worried that we were also going to be hit by another vehicle. I told Dave to drive off and look for a phone box and to get an ambulance, as the guy did not look too good. Dave could get all the information on where we were from the phone box.

It had all happened so quickly and none of us knew what to do or could work out exactly what had happened. In my haste I had dispatched Dave, which meant that there were now five of us, plus the guy on the ground, all on an unlit blind bend in the road, and to add to our problems it started to rain heavily. All we could cover the guy with was the clothes we were wearing, and that was just flimsy stage gear that we had not bothered to change when we had finished the show.

By the time that Dave returned, the police and ambulance were already on the scene, which eased the situation a little as he was the only one who could explain to them what had actually happened. We had spent a few anxious moments trying to tell the police that we knew nothing, and I'm sure that they did not believe us. Every time we mentioned Dave, I'm sure they thought we were making it all up or, if Dave did exist, he had done a runner.

We spent the entire night in the local police station and were all questioned separately as the police tried to place together what had actually happened. For most of that time, Dave was in a state of shock and very incoherent, and I'm sure they thought he was drugged up or something. Dave's only crime that night would have been that he was overtired, and as we were all asleep, he'd had nobody talking to him to help keep him awake; after all we had been on the go since 8 o'clock that morning. We had driven to the booking and set up the gear, and then done the usual rounds of the local record shops and newspaper interviews. By the time the incident had happened, it was two thirty in the morning. Unusually for Dave, that night he had only had a couple of small beers to drink early in the evening.

By the time we left the police station, it was 7am and we were all in no state to talk to the newspaper journalists who greeted us as we left, and so with this in mind they gave us a grubbing in the following day's press. Unfortunately, the guy whom Dave had run over died just as they got him into a local hospital and so we were branded as drug crazed lunatic killers. They did not seem to write anything about why he was lying in the road in the first place. Later it was learnt that he had been dead drunk and had collapsed on his way home from a long drinking binge. This would have been one of the only times when I could not subscribe to the theory that any publicity was good publicity. It got us onto the front page of the newspapers but, at the cost of somebody's life, it was not worth the publicity.

On a brighter note, while we were at a gig in Newcastle we suddenly found ourselves on the bill as a support act. This was new to us and at first we found it hard to swallow but, after finding out that we were to support "Don Lang and his Frantic Five", we accepted it without hesitation. Don Lang had made a big name for himself while appearing on "Six-Five Special", one of the first television shows that featured rock and roll music for the young at heart. However, the show was always in competition with "Oh Boy", which was produced by the rival ITV network, the very first commercial television station in England. The rivalry between these two shows is what helped the music industry for us all. If it had not been for their strong competitiveness towards each other, there would not have been the boom in rock n roll music that we all experienced and benefited from.

It was not the only time that we played support to another band. On one occasion, we played alongside of a guy who called himself Jack the Ripper. His whole act consisted of very fast rock and roll music, as he strutted around the stage trying to frighten to death most that attended, because he carried on stage a small wicker basket that was supposed to house the head of his girlfriend. The head was actually just a stage prop, but it did look realistic. As he strutted around, he would keep grabbing the head by its hair and raising it high above his own, so that the audience could clearly see it, while at the same time he would be splashing real blood over everybody and everything that got in his way. Thankfully for us, being the first act on we had removed all of our gear from the stage by that time. The guy was a complete lunatic and at times looked like he was about to go over the top. Sadly, he treated his band like they were dirt, even though they were good musicians. It amazed me that they stayed with him, although one of them later told us that he was their one and only chance of making it to the top. Sadly, I can now tell him that they had attached themselves to the wrong guy, because a few weeks later he was shut down, when he was banned from most of the main venues around the country.

I certainly benefited from being in the Hartlepool area as it gave me a chance to meet up with Susan once again, or Sexy Susan as the band had nick named her. It had been over three months since we had last seen each other. It's so strange when I think back to our relationship and the way I treated her. I had never slept with her, and yet I would sleep with any girl that chance threw my way. But with Susan, somehow it was different. I was prepared to court her in the old-fashioned way and the question of sex was not an issue and never raised its ugly head. Although it had been three months since we last saw each other, I had not been true to her and I'm sure that she knew that. Somehow, we both accepted the situation and enjoyed each other's company. Strange as it might seem, I was not sure if she was completely true to me, or if she had other boyfriends. One thing is for certain, she was not going with me because of who I was, as she hated the limelight and would never be seen with me when the press was around. There was a time when I thought she reminded me so much of Jennifer, my very first girlfriend, and if I think back I treated her exactly the very same way. Jennifer was the girl that I wanted more than ever to walk down the aisle with, in a lovely white flowing wedding dress with a brilliant white veil; that meant something in those days. I had always dreamt that as she approached me, while I was already at the altar, her veil was so closely woven that I could not see her face. It was only after the ceremony that she raised it and I saw her beautiful, smooth white little angel face. It's a funny thing; the girl was always expected to be a virgin before marriage, but nothing like that was expected from the man. However, it now seems a little hypocritical when I think about it.

However, in the past I had also experienced a couple of bad dreams based on the same theme. The twist being that, as she raised the veil, I was confronted by a horrible, which looking face smiling at me, exposing many missing and some badly blackened teeth, while the main feature on her face was a rather large wart, right on the end of her hooked nose. Many times, I awoke in a sweat from those bad dreams, which were usually drug induced.

If Susan came to the bookings, the time we spent together was usually taken up in a pub before the gig or in a nightclub after the show. Whenever we managed to get a whole day together, we would either go to the cinema or she would show me around the sights of the town we were visiting. However, if I was recognised she would walk away, not wanting to be seen by my side. I once tackled her on that and asked what the problem was. In fact, I came right out and asked if she was married, to which she shook her head while giving me a nice smile. I've often wondered about her, as I never did get deep inside her head to get the answers to a few questions that still remain unanswered to this day.

Because of the many bookings and tight schedules that we were required to stick to, Dave the roadie was promoted to tour manager, although he still had to carry out his roadie duties. However, it was only in title and unfortunately for him there was no pay rise to go along with his new position. It was a good move, as he had become very withdrawn since the accident, and this gave him more to concentrate on so that it helped to get the incident off his mind. Although, I'm sure that it would have stayed with him for the remainder of his life. Things like that you never forget, and there is always something very small that usually triggers off the incident, refreshing it over and over in your mind.

Dave became the hero of the night when he managed to prevent the van from breaking down while he was driving us home from a booking. Our precious Bedford van, which had also been promoted in name, from the "Bedford Hotel" to the "Bedford Hilton", had been flashing a dashboard light informing us that the battery was not charging. Dave explained to me that the alternator was not charging the battery and that, if we did not do something, there was a good chance that we would not make it back to our digs, as the lights would go out. He did not want to risk switching off the engine; because of the weight of the gear, there was a good chance that we would not be able to push start it, as we were in an area where there were not many hills around to assist us.

Dave pulled into the first lay-by that he came across, lifted the engine cover positioned between the driver and passenger front seats, and had a look around with a torch. Sure enough, Dave pointed out that one of the wires had come off the alternator and that we had to screw it on while the engine was still running. I was sure that it was not going to be me, knowing my history of picking up electricity very easily. I had once touched a sparking plug as the engine was still running and the shock I received had thrown me out into the road. As most of the other guys were all asleep in the back of the van, Dave told me he would do it if I held the torch for him. I can still see him gritting his teeth as he fought the pain of the electric shock, as he wound the bare wire around the terminal and proceeded to tighten up the nut to secure it. As with most jobs that you need to do quickly it did not work out for him, and he had to have at least three goes at it before he was successful. I must admit that I admired his guts and determination in keeping hold of the bare wire and nut for the few minutes that it took him. By the time that it was all over, I could see that he was physically shaking and that he needed a few minutes before he got back behind the wheel. Instead I told him to get into the passenger side and that I would drive for a time. While all this was going on, not one of guys in the back had woken up to offer assistance. Therefore, we just left them as I continued the journey home. To me, that incident told me a lot about Dave and we had quite a good conversation as I drove through the night.

There were always fights at the dances we attended, although at that time it rarely involved the band. I guess it's just human nature that young people, alcohol and a good night out do not mix very well. When you take all three into consideration, and then mix in the fourth ingredient of trying to find a girlfriend for the night, something has to give. The one thing I can say is that knives were very seldom used. Most of these tribal punch ups took place outside the venues, usually at the back of the village halls, in a field where the people lucky enough to own cars were able to park. For some unknown reason, fighting teenagers love to roll over other people's property while they are throwing punches and trying to belt some poor soul to pulp. They seem to get that little bit of extra enjoyment when damaging other people's property at the same time. Most of the fights were usually started inside the hall, but within seconds somebody would manage to pull the culprits apart. The gentlemanly thing to do then was to offer to meet each other again outside, and this is what usually happened. However, that would usually affect the band, as we would be left on stage, still playing to an empty hall as everybody flocked outside, jeering and egging their friends on to beat seven bales of muck out of their opponent. Many times, we played to an empty hall for thirty minutes or more. We could not stop playing, as the dance organiser would threaten to cut our pay down. They still wanted us to play, hoping that we would gradually pull the audience back inside, which we inevitably did. However, there were times when we were also very inquisitive, and wished we could have been outside with everybody else; cheering on whoever we thought should become the victor.

On one such occasion we almost had a ringside seat. What I mean by that is at least we had a sort of commentary on what was happening outside. On this particular occasion, just as Ginger had started to play one of his very long lead breaks, a voice suddenly and mysteriously came from his Vox amplifier, announcing that there was a big fight taking place at the rear of the village hall, and that he, PC39 was wanting some assistance. Apparently, what had happened was that Gingers guitar strings, being the correct length for an Ariel and combined with the frequency of his amp, were receiving the policeman's radio signal from behind the hut as he tried to call for back up. We never heard the reply, but every time he sent a further message, we could hear his every word. In this way we could work out what was happening outside. All of this was happening while we were playing, and there was nobody in the hall to hear us. Therefore, we lowered our volume so that we could hear everything that the policeman was saying very clearly.

There were two occasions when particularly violent, big fights broke out inside of the dance halls and worried us. The first was when three young lads arrived at a dance being held in a large room at the back of a hotel. Unfortunately, they were still in their working clothes, which were covered in mud, and wearing Wellington boots. With the very large gathering in the hall, it was inevitable that it would not be too long before some of the girls got mud on their nice new brightly coloured dresses, and this is precisely what happened. The girls complained to their boyfriends and the boyfriends complained to the three strangers. There was no going back and the three guys took immediate offence to the boy's complaint about their muddy clothes. Within seconds an almighty fight developed between the three guys and the rest of the patrons who all ganged up on them.

We were playing at the time and I must admit that within seconds we started to get a little worried, in case the fight spilled onto the very low small stage that we were all standing on, even though the fight was taking place at the other end of the hall. The fight picked up pace so fast that within seconds it was like an all out war. I even noticed that our music suddenly picked up pace and we were racing along with the fight. It brought back memories for some people, who said it was like the old silent cinema days when the organist played along with whatever was happening on the screen, especially during a fight scene when the music raced along.

The owner of the hotel used to hide a sawn-off shotgun fully loaded with pepper under the counter. I can remember him grabbing the gun, aiming straight at these guys, and giving them both barrels. Well it didn't do a thing, they just seemed to shrug it off, took another deep breath and away they went again. Only this time, it looked like they had moved up a gear as their opponents were dropping like flies. If I did not know better, I'd swear that the pepper acted like a drug upon them giving them superhuman strength. In desperation, the landlord let his German Sheppard dog loose onto the crowd in an attempt to quell what was clearly becoming a nasty riot. Within minutes, I saw the dog on the end of its leash, being whirled around and around above the heads of the crowd by one of these three guys. When he finally let it go, it banged up against a wall right next to the band, and was unconscious before it fell to the floor. For some unknown reason the three guys who by this time still did not have a mark on them, made their way to the door smiling and disappeared into the night leaving behind them a trail of damage that included at least fifteen patrons needing a doctor's attention. Not only that, the band was gasping for breath, as we had been playing the same instrumental tune for almost ten minutes at breakneck speed. It was time for an interval and we deserved it even though we had not thrown a punch. I've often thought about that night and I'm sure that those guys simply went to the venue for a fight. To them, it was all part of the night's entertainment, and I'm sure that they enjoyed every minute of it.

The second incident happened whilst we were playing at small village hall just outside of Redcar. Two brothers had hired it for the evening, to collect some money to help purchase a guide dog for a local girl who had been blinded in a road accident. The two brothers had given the event a lot of publicity over the previous weeks, trying to attract as many people to the venue as possible. That night their persistence was rewarded when a couple of hundred people turned up to hear us play. However, as a band we could feel that the atmosphere did not feel quite right. During the whole evening we were expecting something to happen.

The stage was in a rather an unusual position, right alongside a hatch where the beer was being sold. I say unusual because we were very loud and I'm not sure how they heard the patrons when they ordered a drink. Usually at these events the bar is always positioned at the opposite end of the hall to the band.

JB happened to be closest to the bar, as the patrons stocked themselves up with fighting fluid as he called it. Somehow, although I don't know how, we managed to get through the whole booking without a fight. However, during each break that we took from playing, JB would tell us little things that had happened or that he had overheard while we were playing. Then, towards the end of our last bracket while we were still playing, JB edged towards me and told me to wrap it up a couple of songs early as he just knew that one hell of a fight was going to break out soon. As I wound up the last song for the night, and wished everybody a good night, I continued to add a little humour as usual, telling them that if they were drinking and driving they should not forget their cars. I turned and saw that JB was already packing up his gear rather fast. Laughingly, I asked him what his hurry was. Without hesitation, he told me that he was packing up before the fight started.

Before the last word had left his mouth, I heard the first punch hit somebody standing in front of the by now closed makeshift bar hatch. Within a couple of seconds it was full on. Everybody seemed to be hitting somebody, using anything that they could get their hands on, I'm sure that nobody had a clue who was hitting who with what or for what reason. It escalated into a very violent fight where nothing was spared. As a band we became worried that our precious musical equipment was going to become involved and consequently damaged and broken. By now every member of the band was hurriedly grabbing their gear and dragging it to a small room on the side of the hut that had been used as a canteen during the night's entertainment.

There we stacked everything inside as we tried to protect it. Most of the electrical wires had just been dragged across the floor and ended up looking like a heap of black spaghetti, with a mass of plugs sticking out of it. Members of the band who had managed to pick up girlfriends during the night even hid them in the room. Once we were happy that all the gear was safely in the room Ginger and I stood by the door with a section of a microphone stand in our hands to stop anybody entering. However, I must say that at no time did anybody pick on any member of the band, or try to enter the room.

In the early stages of the fight, I had thought that it was the band that had sparked off the incident by picking up the local girls. We later learnt that the trouble was over the two brothers who had organised the event. Somewhere along the line while they had been organising the event they had rubbed somebody up the wrong way, and a gang had come to the event to settle an old score with them. The fight was a little lopsided from the start, as there were only two of them, with maybe a hand full of local helpers, who were all innocently involved. They were no match for the couple of dozen young thugs who turned up from another village to reap their revenge upon the brothers.

As they were fighting, a lot of them were felled and ended up in each other's arms, all rolling around on the floor that was by now covered with dozens of broken bottles. When they finally stood up, all were covered in blood from head to foot. It reminded me of a scene from a war film, after a bomb had been thrown at a group of soldiers. At one time, both brothers were forced into a corner and six of the aggressors all rained sturdy wooden chairs down onto them, leaving one of them awaiting an ambulance's arrival. Although the fight did not involve the band in a physical way, financially it did. Once the fight was all over, and the severely injured organiser accompanied by his limping brother had been rushed to the hospital, we were left with nobody to pay us for the night's work. It must have been one of the only times that we were ever paid cash at the booking. Usually, Norm made sure that he received the money up front long before we played at the venue.

As we stacked the last piece of equipment into the back of our van, a couple of the locals who were helping with the event, but were by now nursing major bruises and cuts themselves, told us that it would probably take more money than was raised at the event to pay for all of the damage that we had just witnessed. I could not help myself; feeling grateful that we had survived damage to ourselves and our gear, I told him to tell the brothers to keep our fee and help buy the guide dog for the young girl. Although I was later to learn that Norm still wanted his cut of the fee, and so once again we were out of pocket, having played for nothing.

I must admit that the two brothers gave a good account of themselves but they were certainly no match against such overwhelming odds; they were plainly outnumbered. We learnt later that the one who ended up in hospital received brain damage from the chairs that were rained down on him. To add to this, nobody was charged over the incident and it was left to the remaining brother, along with a few close friends, to patch up the damage in the hall.

I was once told of a very young pop group from the Norwich area that had all of their equipment smashed up by a bunch of irate local teenagers. Apparently, one of the members of the group had taken his girlfriend along with him for the evening's entertainment. When she was asked to dance by a local and refused his advances, the dejected lad got all his mates to climb on the stage and smashed up everything while the band were still trying to play.

Crowds can be very unpredictable and at times you have to be very careful what you say and how you handle them. Once full of fighting fuel, they are usually wound up like watch springs and ready to let fly at whosoever gets in their way. I know that, in my early days, I would not have given a toss and would have welcomed a good fight. However, now it was slightly different; we had a lot more gear to think about. During such interesting times, I usually became the diplomat, and would try to talk my way out of a tight situation.

One night, without realising what I had said, I annoyed a young guy in the crowd when he irritated me by constantly shouting up at me on the stage, telling me that he wanted to hear some soul music. In the end, I got fed up and called back at him that he would have to listen to "arse soul", to which he took offence. He spent the rest of the night shouting aggressive insults at me. As if that was not bad enough, occasionally he would throw pennies at the band. Now that's a different ball game and can be quite dangerous, especially if one of them were to hit you in an eye, although most bands just accepted it as part of what you have to go through to make it to the top. It's all part of the never-ending apprenticeship.

JB had always wanted to purchase and train either a German Sheppard or Rottweiler dog to sit in front of his amp and speakers during each performance and guard his equipment. After what happened to the one that was set onto the muddy workers, I doubt very much that it would have been a deterrent. I used to laugh at his idea, telling him that the RSPCA would be after him if it were not fitted with a head set to protect its ears.

When we returned from the tour, Norm greeted us with the good news that the following day we were off to tour Germany for a couple of weeks. He had done a deal with a German agent and felt that it would be good experience for us. After all, it was a chance to expose a German audience to our music, and to maybe improve on it. As far as the band was concerned, it sounded like a good move; none of us had ever been abroad before, so it would be a whole new experience for us all. Now we would be able to bill ourselves as internationally acclaimed rock and roll stars wherever we performed.

Lucky for us, Norm had already done all the paperwork, including getting all our passports. We caught the Harwich Ferry, after many setbacks while trying to get the Bedford van and all our gear on board, and settled ourselves down in the duty free bar on the top deck of the ship. There we all discussed what awaited us on the other side of the river, as we called it. The excitement within the band was electrifying, as we all had our own views on what to expect. Unfortunately, we also participated in a long and arduous drinking session, and to our discomfort the sea that day was not very kind to us. Both Ginger and JB were violently seasick and spent half the journey to the Promised Land hanging over the side of the ship getting rid of a few pints of best duty free beer.

Dave had not drunk quite as much as the rest of the band, but by the time we docked in Ostend, Belgium he was quite merry. Even though he had been drinking, he still had to drive the van because the rest of us were completely drunk. Mind you, he knew the rules and that was why he had been hired. I might add that at that time there was no such thing as drink driving bans and no little bags to blow in to. In those days, you had to try and walk straight along a white chalk line that the police officer drew on the road for you, or touch your nose with a certain finger of your right hand. I always wondered what would happen if you told them that you were left-handed.

As Dave drove off the ship and through the customs, we were lucky enough not to be stopped and searched, so he headed straight for the main gate to get out of the docks and on our way to Germany. Unfortunately, he missed a sign warning passengers of the change in the European road conditions. Namely, on the continent they drive on the opposite side of the road to what we were used to in England.

Passing through the gate, he swung the van to the left, positioning himself into the lane on the left-hand side of the road, to be confronted by a thirty ton truck bearing down on us at high speed and in our lane. We must have all been looking out of the front window at the same time because we all started shouting at him that if he did not do something very quickly; our tour was going to be over before it had even started. Luckily, he swung to the right as the truck whistled past us without even dropping a gear. We felt even luckier that we had not driven into another vehicle to the right of us, as Dave had carried out this manoeuvre without even looking where he was going. Then, as he drove up behind another vehicle, we all started trying to tell him at the same time that we have to drive on the right on the continent. At a guess, I would think that he was the only person on board who did not know it. Anyway it all turned out okay, especially with us all shouting further instructions at him whenever he got it wrong. It's a wonder that our shouting did not make it worse for him. The only time he struggled was when he went around a corner; being used to driving on the left, he would always cut the corner and hug the left-hand side of the road. I have to admit that more than once he nearly drove into another vehicle, but somehow we avoided a major catastrophe as we continued our drive east.

As we drove through Belgium, we all took in all the new sights that awaited us along side of the road. Several hours later, we approached the German border and were in high spirits, as we would soon be arriving at our new destination. However, the customs checkpoint was soon to remove the smile from our faces, as we were treated like criminals. For some reason, pop groups were treated like riff raff or second class citizens and criminals in Germany. They took our van to one side, stripped everything out, and spread it on the ground around the van. Each item was then taken apart in minute detail in an effort to see if we were trying to smuggle anything into the country. We all felt quite humiliated, as we had been made to sit down on the grass by the van to witness the intense search while other police officers stood over us brandishing sub-machine guns. It suddenly occurred to me that they were actually looking for drugs. At the very same time, I started twitching my nose because I could smell something unusual; although I was sure I knew what it was. As I looked at Steve, I suddenly became horrified as I saw him smoking and realised that he was puffing away on some grass. I went over to him to tell him to put it out before they realised what he was smoking. With a smile on his face, he told me that the customs officer had told him to go over and make himself comfortable on the grass and that he was only carrying out his orders.

By this time, most of the other members of the band knew what was going on and started grinning and laughing at me. I told Steve not to be so bloody stupid and put the dammed thing out, which he did. He then laughed again and told me that they had not got a clue what they were looking for, and this proved it. He added that half the coppers in England didn't even know what it smelt like. I asked if he had any hidden in the gear and he told me that he was smoking the last bit he had; he was hoping to buy some locally when we got to where we were going. I just prayed that none of the other guys had hidden any in their gear, although I learnt later that Ginger had hidden some pills in an old bottle that used to contain headache pills known as Codeine. However, the pills he hid in the bottle for some reason had a letter C stamped on them, and when asked by the customs guy, Ginger just pointed to the word Codeine on the front of the bottle, smiled at him, and everything was okay.

Unfortunately, while all of our gear was spread out on the grass it started to rain. Even as I complained to the police, they would not let us cover any of our gear until they were satisfied that we were clean. Then, reluctantly and begrudgingly, they told us to clean up the mess they had just made. I could not help myself and to the guy in charge I said, "Welcome to Germany, I hope you enjoy your stay in our pleasant, friendly Gestapo state". However, before I could count to three, I was whisked away by two armed guards and placed in a cell inside the customs house.

Once the band had replaced everything in the van and completed the paperwork, which took a further couple of hours, I was released and told not to be so smart in future, as I was in Germany now, not some sort of banana republic like the UK. If I did not respect the laws of the land, I would end up in big trouble. I could not help myself as I clicked the heels of my shoes and said "yar hole". On reflection, it was a silly thing to do, as I learnt later that we could have been thrown out of the country and so we would have missed the wonderful German hospitality that awaited us. I found myself wondering if they were all like this.

We were also in for another big surprise once we reached the town of Wiesbaden, where some accommodation had been arranged for us. There we met up with the German agent Herr Cutler, whom we called Hair Cut, who kindly informed us that this was where we would be staying and that each day we would travel to the venues, some of which were to be American airbases. I was furious and kept cursing Norm for pulling such a dirty trick on us; he knew what I thought about American airbases. However, the agent told me that Norm did not know where we would be playing; it had all been left up to him. For some reason, I had thought that we were going to be playing in the small clubs that litter the sordid areas of every big city around the world, but according to our agent each night we would be performing at a different venue and that they were scattered right around the country.

Each day, we would leave the hotel following the agent who was to lead us to the booking. Unfortunately, he was driving a BMW sports car while we were still in our precious low powered Bedford van. Anyway, after losing us a few times he finally got the message and decided to slow down in order that we might be able to follow him. The bookings were not as bad as we had expected and we were well received at most of them. At that time and to our amazement anything English was becoming the flavour of the month and so we could do no wrong. They liked our music and we did not understand German so, no matter what they asked for, I would always say "Yar" to everything. Even if we swore at them I'm sure that most did not know what we were saying half the time. It seemed to work, as we had the crowds on their feet for most of the night.

At times it was all very tiring and, on one particular day we had to play at three clubs. We had been booked as a cabaret act, which meant that we only played for about an hour, usually in the middle of the regular act that was playing the club on that day. This meant that we had to set up our gear at each club, and then take it down and move onto the next venue to repeat it all over again and again.

One funny thing happened as we were setting up our gear at the very first venue, when we suddenly realised that the Germans have totally different power plugs to us and we did not have anything that we could adapt for the occasion. Therefore, we had to bodge up a lead and wire it directly in to the socket outlets while it was still live, which caused a few eyebrows to be raised at the time. I told the powers that be that it was this or nothing, as we did not have the correct plugs and without them we could not play. However, the very next day we bought some plugs locally and changed all our leads.

On another occasion, the agent was leading us to a booking, and taking the countryside route to avoid the town traffic jams, when we became held up in a long line of traffic that had come to a standstill. Apparently the police had shut the road off, although we had no idea why. Anyway, Hair Cut got out of his car, walked over to a police officer, and after a few minutes returned to shout back to us to follow him. With that, he drove to the front of the queue and the police officer waved us both through to continue our journey. We never did know what he told the policeman but, whatever it was, it worked and we were not late for the booking. Of all the rumours that went around concerning that one, the one I liked most was that the police officer was his brother.

On another day, we drove all the way to Frankfurt and to a dingy-looking cellar club without enough room to swing a cat around. Then on the way home we called into an American airbase, where Elvis had been stationed while he was in the army, to play a cabaret set in the middle of an American female artists country show. I'm not sure how it went down, or how we were accepted, because within minutes of us finishing our set, we had pulled down our gear, thrown it all in the van, and were once again on our way.

The one thing that I took away from that venue was that I got so close to seeing my very first music idol, although I've often wondered what I would have said to him if I'd have been given a chance to speak to him. With the type of questions that he would have been asked a thousand times over, somehow I would have had to come up with something very English and original.

All the long distance driving that we had to undertake after each booking was costing us a fortune in petrol, and to add to our troubles we were only receiving the same money as we did in England. Not only that, we had to use our money while in Germany, and Norm would sort it all out once we returned. I think at one time Dave worked out that we covered over 4000 miles from the time we left Norm until we returned; the mind boggles as to how our faithful Bedford van stuck the trip. I don't think anybody ever checked the oil or tyres; we just assumed that it would keep going.

One night, as we arrived back at the hotel, I was hungry, so Ginger and I went looking for something to eat. Unfortunately, all we could find was a vending machine in the entrance to the hotel, which only sold fruit and did not have much of a selection. We settled on a small plastic tray that contained three apples, and after scraping together some change, we managed to understand the German instructions on how to retrieve our evening meal. On reflection it was a dear meal, as we worked out that the apples cost us 22 shillings and 6 pence for the three. When we worked out that the average guy working in a factory in England at that time was only earning around £10 to £12 a week, it was a dear meal and not one that we would always be able to afford.

This must have been the first time that girls were off the band menu, as the band was not given much time to be able to pick one up. The tour had taken place at a very fast pace, as we were rushed around the country at break-neck speed. By the time we arrived back at our hotel, we were usually deadbeat and crashed out on our beds fully clothed to grab what little sleep we could. Although there were a couple of girls hanging around the hotel entrance, there was no way that any of the boys were going to pay for it. If apples cost 7 shillings and 6 pence each, the mind boggles as to what the girls would be charging.

Towards the end of the tour, we were awakened one morning by the sound of heavy knocking on our hotel-room door. I jumped out of bed to be greeted by the police, who arrested us and took us to the local police station where we were all locked in the cells. Apparently, the agent had neglected to pay for our accommodation and had also mysteriously disappeared for the moment. Hair Cut had suddenly become a Hair Runner, I told the police, who did not take kindly to my joke.

It was a waste of time trying to reason with them, as I did not understand German and they did not understand much English. I found myself constantly telling the members of the band, with a smile on my face, not to mention the war, as it might get worse. Ginger asked how it could get worse, as we were in jail, nobody knew what was going on, and there was no sign of anybody coming to get us out. In addition, the constant clicking of my heels every time I stopped in front of one of the officers was not helping. Anyway, halfway through the day it was all sorted out as the agent suddenly reappeared and paid a couple of the outstanding bills. However, there was no apology and it seemed to be a normal occurrence in that part of the world.

Once the tour was over, I'm sure we were all glad to be on the way home, and excitement mounted as Dave drove the van onto the nearest Autobahn and headed towards Belgium.

We were following an old Ford Tunis car when it suddenly rolled off the road as it went around a roundabout. We all jumped out of our vehicle and rushed down a steep embankment, to find that the car had ended up on its wheels on another road at the bottom of the bank. Its roof was half crushed in and it looked a right mess. There were only two people in the vehicle. The driver, who I think was Turkish; lucky for him he was uninjured. While in the back was his wife. She was completely covered in black clothing, with only her eyes visible through a slit in the material. One look into those eyes and you could see that she was crying, as blood was also seeping through the material that covered her face. However, we did not dare touch her as we realised that the driver must have been a Moslem. Anyway, we managed to get the car started and back on the main road for him. We found out that they were heading for the ferry, which was still several hours drive away.

We decided to stay behind them for as long as possible, which happened to be to the customs checkpoint as we left Germany. Once again we were treated to the great German pastime, known as tourist hating and English bashing, to which once again we lost several hours of our precious time while everything was hauled out of the van and searched. Only this time, we all kept our mouths shut, not wanting to delay our departure one minute longer than necessary. This time, I knew we were not carrying drugs, as we had not been able to make contact with anybody. We had been so busy and on the road most of the time that we did not have time to search for the stuff.

Once back on the road, Dave had to put his foot down so that we did not miss the ferry from Ostend. Would you believe me if I told you that the Turkish couple in the car made it all the way to Ostend without being stopped by anybody, and were just in front of us as we lined up to drive on board the ferry. It was also amazing that they were even allowed to board the ferry with the car being in such a state. We all felt good as the Turkish guy acknowledged us with a hand wave. We would all have liked to know how they got on upon their arrival in England, because I'm sure he would have been stopped once he got out of the ferry terminal and onto the main roads. I was also interested as to the condition of the woman in the back seat, something we never did find out about.

When we arrived home, Norm gave us two weeks off, which was not what we all wanted. Being so heavily in debt, we needed every penny we could lay our hands on in order to pay it off.

During a moment when Norm managed to get me on my own, he explained that the two weeks off had been arranged for a good reason. I had been invited back to the recording studios to make another record, but they did not want the band. It was only me they were interested in, and that they would be using session musicians for the recordings. That hurt; after all we had all grown up together in the music business and got on well in each other's company. At first I told Norm that it was all off and, as far as I was concerned, they could all take a running jump. However, once I had calmed down, Norm went on to explain that it was my one big chance and that I should not let the opportunity slip between my fingers, telling me that I should take full advantage of the offer and think twice before I made my next move. He went on to tell me that once I was in, I could then try and demand changes further down the track. He told me that he would explain it to the band, if I did not want to break the bad news to them. However, I insisted that it was my job. After all, I was running the band.

The following day Norm and I drove up to the Regal studios in London, to a meeting that had been pre-arranged with the Bosses. However, they were pretty blunt, laying the law down right from the start on how it was going to be. There was no way that they wanted to record the Convertibles, as far as they were concerned they were not very good musicians. They only wanted me and they would be using their own studio musicians on the session. However, I detected a note of weakness in the way that they presented their offer towards me. I felt that they were after me at any cost, and so there just might be a little leeway in the negotiating. With this in mind, I started to lay down what I wanted, and made it clear in no uncertain language that I was running the band. Further, I wanted them to know that I also wanted to sing most of my own songs on the recordings, as it were these that were going down well at the gigs. If I were being forced to use session musicians on record, then I would still use my band on live bookings. It was a well-known fact that studio musicians were good in the studios but that most of them wanted to go home each night and so did not want to tour. Furthermore, most of them could not drum up an atmosphere at a live gig. I knew my band, I knew our limitations, and so I picked the material that we played well and that was appreciated by the crowds.

At one time, they waved a contract at me, while I told them it was no good to them if I did not sign it. Unfortunately, I placed Norm on the spot, not realising that he had already signed for me. Rubbish I told them, I sign my own contracts and if my signature was not on the bottom then it was worthless. I was of an age where I did my own deals, and I warned them that if they stitched me up then I would never sing another word for them. Deep inside, I felt that I was getting close to the end of the augment, as that was not what I wanted. I was a singer and loved what I was doing. There was just no way that I could go through life not being able to sing.

As the agreements were being made between us, the contract was sent back to the legal department to be changed. I had reluctantly agreed to the session musicians as long as the songs being recorded were mostly mine, leaving the door open for them to add some of their crappy songs to the B-sides of the records. This they agreed to, allowing them a chance to at least make a little more money from the record sales at my expense, as they would still receive 50% of the song-writing revenues that the record made. Even if the song was on the B-side, and was hardly played by the record-buying public, it did not stop them receiving their share of the money. None of this changed the agreement I had with Norm; our handshake still stood, even though at times the band had felt cheated by the way in which the spoils were being divided.

The next day, I recorded four songs, two of which "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Missing You" were written by me. The other two "Shakin City" and "Living my Life" were written by the Regal studio song writers.

It has to be understood that this was during a time when most studios were changing over to stereo recording. Up until then, all recordings had been a mono format, and usually recorded in one take as the whole band played together, standing around just as they would on stage. Even the Beatles recorded their first couple of albums in a mono format, taking only a couple of days on each album, which is incredible when you consider that, today some bands will spend months in a studio working on just one song.

Because of the cost factor involved in re-recording each song several times, the studio engineers and producers allowed a lot of mistakes to stand. To the studio bosses time cost money, and that was something they did not like parting with very easily. What amazed me was that most of the people running these studios were men in their late fifties to early sixties. Here was a load of old men all trying to influence what young people wanted to hear. Not one of them realised that the young people of the day had completely different tastes in music. If it had not been for the Beatles, who managed to break away from that type of routine and produce new young people's music, I don't think none of us would have been around to enjoy the spoils of war. I also believe that leaving a few very minor mistakes in the recordings gave them some sort of character. It showed that the bands were human and like the public, they also made mistakes. Today, some records are too clinically clean, and the public know that they are all corrected with gizmos and electronics. When they see the band live, they are disappointed that some of them do not sound like their records.

It also amazed me that, during my time in the studio, I was not held over a barrel, in order to force me to record one of their poorly penned songs. I like to think that finally they were taking notice of what was going on around them. At that time, the Beatles were setting the pace in England and one would have been a mug if they had not noticed what was going on in the music business. As Norm and I left the studio, we were both pleased with the results of my day's work. To prove a point, I signed the new contract that had been thrust at me as we attempted to leave the building.

Back home, I called a meeting of all the members of the band at Norm's café. I felt that if I'd met them in a pub where the booze was flowing; there was a good chance that tempers were going to get a little frayed. I knew that when they learnt what deal I had sorted out, they were not going to be very happy with me. I had to hope that they did not walk out on me in a temper. After all, we had all been mates for a very long time.

As I broke the news to them, a terrible hush settled on the room as I waited for the first sparks to fly. However, I had been wrong, they all acted as if they knew what I was going to say and that they had been expecting it. Around that time, there had been several stories in the newspapers of bands that had split up so that the lead singers could go off and pursue solo careers. You only had to look at what happened to Cliff Richards. Although in his case his band the Shadows had managed to carve out a nice little career of their own playing instrumentals. Mind you, they also had a lot of the talent.

I did my best to sound sincere when I told them that I had not deserted them, but had taken full advantage of the best offer that I could secure, to keep the band together and on the road. After all, wasn't that what we all wanted to be able to make live music. If we played our cards right, we could all be winners in this game. After all, the session musicians had given me a good backing sound on record. How was the public going to know that it was not the Convertibles playing on the record, when they heard us play live. Mind you, I had to remind them that they had to do a good cover job of the record, so that the public did not smell a rat. Who knows, I went on, maybe we will be able to prove ourselves to these studio morons and next time they will let you all be on record. Slowly, they all started to see reason and accept what I had told them, that there was no way that I would desert them, especially after we had come this far together.

Most of our financial arrangements had to be changed over this deal, and if we did not sort something out it would all become a little mixed up. Because I was now involved on my own with the studios, I decided to make major changes. I explained to the band that problems would arise down the road. With Norm's help, we drew up an agreement for the band that I would pay them a set weekly wage from the proceeds of each booking. By now, these were fairly constant and it did not matter where we played, it was always for the same fee plus expenses if bookings were out of the way. The band seemed quite happy, as I had been generous with what I offered. A further benefit for them was that they would now be paid weekly, rather than having to wait for the gig cheques to pass through the bank account. I would stand all of that, and if and when we earned more, then I would review and increase their wage accordingly. I'm sure that none of them doubted my word or thought that I would cheat them. However, if in future there were losses then I would have to stand them. That day I became an employer and wondered what the future would hold for me.

By the time that our two-week break was over, we were all back to normal and happy to be back on the road once again. This tour was a little different from the last one, now we were to be based in the general London area for almost a month, so it would be easy for anybody to get home for a few hours if they wanted.

It was while we were in London that my first record was released, with "Shakin City" on the A-side and my "Dog Day Afternoon" on the B-side. I was devastated that they had chosen to use their song over mine. It also made me feel cheated that they had told me lies, knowing full well what they were going to do. At the time of recording "Shakin City", I had felt that it was very weak and lacked the knockout punch that we always tried to deliver live on stage.

One of the band members remarked that so far the word "Shakin" had been on both record releases, and suggested that maybe I should change my name to Shakin Morris and the Shaky Convertibles. However, there was no way that I was having a part of that one, especially as Norm had done all of the promotional work in the press and on the radio.

During our live shows the "Convertibles" pulled out all of the stops, and we achieved a fabulous version of "Dog Day Afternoon". And why shouldn't we? After all we had been performing the song in front of the public for almost nine months. In the studios, I had performed it as I did on stage, so that the session men picked up on this and it came out almost like the "Convertibles" version. I believe Ginger was the only one who had to change part of his lead break so that the public would never know the difference. With "Shakin City", the band had to try and copy the record note for note, and that's easier said than done. It ended up not quite as tight a sound; that only comes with constantly playing it over and over. It was also lucky that I had witnessed how the studio musicians had obtained their sounds on record, and so I could pass that information onto the band. There are many budding musicians out there who are very frustrated that they cannot copy something they hear on record because they do not know what tricks were used in obtaining this sound in the studio.

However, when it first appeared in the charts the song was listed as "Dog Day Afternoon". Call it what you want: fate, luck or even divine intervention. Somehow, one of the radio announcers-cum disc jockeys had placed the record on the turntable upside down and mistakenly played my song to an eagerly awaiting young audience, telling them that we were a brand-new band on the scene that were playing around the London area at the moment and were destined to go places. Within minutes, teenagers started ringing up the radio station, all asking for details of the record and where could they purchase it. From there, it snowballed as other radio announcers picked up on it, and played it on their programs. After a time, the teenagers started to flock to the shops to buy it; in doing so, they forced Regal Records to reconsider and to make "Dog Day Afternoon" the A-side track.

Its rise up the charts was phenomenal and caught us all off guard. Within just two weeks, it was sitting just outside the tenth position and that gave us all a buzz, although I have often wondered what part Norm played in its historic rise. I guess we will never know now, but I bet I paid for it handsomely somewhere along the line. I often wonder how much it would cost to play the wrong record on the radio. After all, it was common knowledge at that time that most of the foreign stations were paid by record companies to continually plug certain records.

Suddenly, the whole band was thrust into the limelight. We had become accustomed to the small provincial newspapers, now all of a sudden the main nationals were interviewing us. We were also being recognised while we were out in public, and wherever we went we drew a crowd. There was even talk that we might get onto the BBC's Top of the Pops' television show that was watched by millions of young people every Thursday night, if Norm could swing it for us.

As was usual with us, no sooner had we received some good news then there was always some bad to follow. It came in the form of a phone call from Norm informing me that my Mother had passed away. She had been very ill for quite some time but had finally succumbed to pneumonia, passing away in her sleep while on her own. Norm did the right thing for me and cancelled a week's bookings as the band headed home. There was no way that I could have ignored what had happened. After all, Mother was the only family that I had and we had relied on each other for almost twenty years. Her passing was going to leave a big hole in my life and I wanted to see her just one more time before she was buried. I also learnt that people could be very callous at bad times like this in your life.

My Mother had lived in a small council bungalow that was designed for older people. The very day that I buried my Mother, I got a letter from the council ordering me to move out all of her belongings and to clean it up so that somebody else could move in right away. The band helped me and we gave almost everything to the Salvation Army, so they could help the homeless. The only things that I held onto were the old family photos album of us that included my Father and a couple of her favourite brooches. I was on my own now and, not having anywhere to live; I was going to be travelling light for some time. In fact, I could go so far as to say that there was nothing keeping me in the town anymore. So maybe the time was right to move on and base myself where it was all happening around the capital, London.

By week's end we had returned to London and were back into the swing of things with the tour, which was good for my financial situation, as I had to pay the band even when we were not playing. We were on what was known as a pub circuit, with venues like the Brentford Red Lion and the Hammersmith Palace. They were good venues and we had a lot of fun playing at them. We were also amazed to find that "Dog Day Afternoon" had reached number 7 in the charts that week, something I had forgotten about completely while sorting out my Mothers affairs.

Norm managed to get us a spot on Top of the Pops that same week. It was all hastily arranged and we had to slot it into all of our other commitments and engagements, which had to be honoured. For the venues, the rise of our record sales had been a blessing in disguise, because contracts had been signed when we were nobodies and so they had hired us very cheap. Suddenly here we were, all budding chart toppers who could have been earning a fortune but had to honour our contracts for peanuts. Hey but that's life. We just had to get on with it and take what life threw at us. As a card player I've always said that you can only play the hand that has been dealt you.

The day that we all arrived at the BBC television studios was an eye opener for us. It was something new and completely different from what we had imagined whenever we watched the show on TV. The first big buzz we all got was, being amongst some of the top groups and singers in the country, people we had only read about in newspapers and magazines or listened to on records. Suddenly, here we were rubbing shoulders and talking to them. The next big shock came when we set ourselves up on the stage to play, only to find out that we were to do neither. In fact we had to mime to the record. Therefore, as far as I was concerned it didn't matter who played on the record and who mimed alongside me either way, the public would not have known. I made myself unpopular with the show's producer at the time by remarking that if I had known how it was all done, I would have brought a couple of monkeys along with me. Unfortunately, I played right into her hands when she replied that she thought I had. Therefore, in the end it was all a bit of an anti-climax. It did not even matter if we acted badly because the producer would cut away from you and just position the camera in such a way that the public could not see your lips moving. The only thing real was the screaming fans that cheered for you as you were introduced, although they were told when to start and when to stop. They had all been pre-selected from a long queue outside the back stage door a couple of hours earlier. I'm sure they were chosen for the high notes that they obtained while screaming. However, they were faded out as the record was introduced and off you went. I have always felt sorry for the acts appearing on the show that had funny introductions to their records so that the singer missed his queue to come in. There can be nothing more embarrassing than somebody not singing while the record is playing.

The whole incident brought back memories of old black and white films, when the singer was accompanying himself on guitar. If you look closely, some of the guitars did not even have strings on them. Later, that was to be what happened to the great Elvis Presley on a couple of occasions.

With our growing success around the London area, Norm managed to book us into a regular bed and breakfast place. We finally had a headquarters, in the London suburb of Bermondsey just south of the Thames River. This made life a lot easier for us; it also meant that we could leave all of our clothes and personal belongings safely locked away in our rooms and not have to cart them around with us in the back of the van. I'm sure that by this time none of us knew what an ironed shirt was; that was a luxury we had not tasted for weeks. In my case, it was something that I would have to get used to as my Mother used to do all my ironing for me. Unfortunately, in those days there were no such things as non iron shirts, although we did have the luxury of drip dry shirts if you could afford them, they were way above our clothing budget. How did the television advert of the day go, "Rael Brook shirts with the London look".

This new set up was great as it meant that we could drive back to the digs each night and get a nice uninterrupted sleep, while at other times we could move onto the nightlife anywhere we choose in the capital. The sleeping arrangement was quite funny as we all had to double up with somebody else, so it was a good job that we all got on well with each other. I ended up with Ginger, as we were both on the same wavelength in the music stakes. He knew what I was trying to achieve, which was almost the same as him. While on stage he could anticipate exactly what I was going to do next. He knew when I was going to throw a lead break at him and would make full use of it, drawing the lime light squarely to him. However, being the good showman that he was, he never stole it from me. More to the point, he knew how to play a lick that would make me sound and look like the main attraction that I was. Of all the musicians in the band, he was the one whom I did not want to lose. He and I could go along way together and we both knew it. With all this in mind, whenever we had time in that tiny little room of ours, or we could not sleep, music was always our conversation subject. We would talk about what we wanted for the future, how we could better what we were doing. We were so close and heading in the same direction. On the social side, when one of us picked up a girl for the night, the other would usually pick up her mate. That's assuming that her mate was a girl. We had many foursome night outs together.

With all the good luck and friendly news that seemed to be surrounding us, it was as though we could do no wrong in the music stakes. However, I could not help thinking that in the past there were many times when we had all been brought back down to earth with a big bump, as lady luck deserted us and once again something bad suddenly reared its ugly head in front of us. So I guessed that it would only be a matter of time before something turned up.

No sooner had these negative thoughts entered my head than the next piece of bad luck suddenly arrived in the guise of Steve Johnson, our rhythm guitarist. Now, I know that none of us were angels in the having a good time department, but Steve had gone way over the top. His main problem was that he had been moving in a different circle of friends to the rest of the band. Since our popularity had escalated, he had befriended many local musicians and had been visiting the local nightclubs around the London area when our shows were over. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before his drug habit also escalated, as he moved onto ever harder drugs to experience the bigger kicks that his friends promised.

It all came to a head the night he failed to turn up for a booking and I had to ask the supporting act if we could borrow their rhythm player for the night. Lucky for us, he was good and we had no problems, other than missing Steve's vocal harmonies. If that wasn't bad enough, later that very same week he missed another couple of gigs and that really got me going. We had a flaming row and I laid the law down to him, telling him to shape up or ship out. He then caught me off guard when he apologised and told me that he would make an effort as long as we allowed for his drugs problem, which he promised he would do something about. The whole band was behind me when I told him it was no problem. If he needed help we would all go out of our way to support him. However, I think it caught us all off guard as we had expected Steve to climb on his high horse and to fight with us tooth and nail. Somehow, he had turned completely around from what we had all expected and sounded sincere in what he promised us.

I knew that his problem was heroin and that it was not going to be easy to get him off it, but at least he had admitted that he had a problem and told us that he would make an effort. It was a start. I had been led to believe that most addicts never admit that they are hooked, usually accusing everyone else around them of having the problems. It usually just ends up in a storming row, with both parties walking away from each other and nobody seeking help. That day, Steve sounded so sincere to me. I trusted and believed his every word.

Later that night, there was no problem when we played at the Wild Man Hotel in Guilford. Okay, Steve made a few mistakes, but we all let it go over our heads and just got on with the show. I mean, we knew that he'd made a mistake but it was not worth letting the audience know. After all, it was a good bet that they had missed it anyway. It's something that I have always done on stage; whenever a mistake is made, I would keep looking straight ahead. If you looked at the culprit then the audience would also look at him, wondering what had happened. There was always plenty of time backstage to sort out our problems amongst ourselves. Why involve people that it does not concern?

However, I must have been stupid if I thought that Steve would stick to his word. After all, as I have just explained, most people hooked on the hard drugs cannot help themselves. Well, that is exactly what happened to him. He drifted back into his old ways and constantly turned up late for bookings. When he did eventually arrive, he was usually accompanied by a large group of people who were total strangers to us. His playing on stage became erratic and all over the place, and left a lot to be desired. The final straw came when once again, without explanation; he failed to turn up completely for two of the gigs.

It was a very hard decision to drop Steve from the band, but Norm assured me that it had to be done before further damage was done to our ever-increasing publicity machine, which was by now dropping into top gear. Norm even offered to be the one to break the news to him, but I explained that it was my band and so it was my job to tell him. It was made easy for me when he turned up in such a state that there was just no way that I would let him on stage in the condition that he was in. Steve became very aggressive, as would be expected of someone being shown the door to what was probably going to be a successful career. At one time, he became so violent that I had to get a couple of security guys at the venue to physically frogmarch him out of the building before somebody called the police. Unfortunately as they were manhandling him from the dressing room, the replacement guitarist we had hired for the night arrived on the scene. It did not take Steve long to realise who he was, as he was carrying a guitar.

It was hard enough getting rid of him, but what we didn't need right then was more bad press. Unfortunately, there were a couple of people from the local press outside the building who witnessed Steve's eviction. Coupled with this quite a few of our fans were also queuing up to get inside, some of whom were Steve's ardent fans.

The next day, as I arrived at a venue, I was faced by a barrage of press and media personnel, all throwing questions at me as to the fate of Steve. As far as they were concerned, I was the big bad ugly guy who had thrown him out of the band. The whole incident was getting out of control, while all I wanted to do was to protect Steve from any further press regarding his condition. If I told the truth, then he would be persecuted further. If I told a lie by making something up, there was a good chance that it would all blow up in my face later and I'd be accused of being a liar. Some of the guys in the band told me not to worry and to treat it like we used to in the early days, when any publicity was good publicity and to hell with them. However, it was different now, as we were not running our own publicity department; for that we had Norm, and he had hired an army of so-called experts on the subject.

Then, right in the middle of these troubles, would you believe that "Dog Day Afternoon" caught us all by surprise and reached the number-one spot in the singles charts. The band was ecstatic and we congratulated ourselves. We had made it; we were big stars now and wanted to soak up the adulation that was being showered on us by our management. However, I had my doubts as to whether we had reached the number one purely on our musical ability or by Norm's manipulation of the chart. Whichever it was, I joined in with the band and enjoyed it for as long as I could. After all, if Norm gave it to us then there was always the chance that he could take it all away if he chose.

It was at times like this that I suddenly became aware of the power of Norm and the fact that he was not a guy to be crossed. Mind you, we had done all of our dealings so far on a friendly handshake, and so far he had delivered to the band exactly what he had promised. At that time, I could see no reason to suspect that anything would change.

It's a shame to admit, but Steve was easy to replace. Because of our national success, we were now household names, which meant that once it got out that we required a new rhythm guitarist we could have employed any one of a couple of million budding guitar players from all over the country. It was a time when a lot of bands were making it to the top from all over the place. Whereas in the early days the bands were made up of people from the same village or town, now when replacements were required they took the best that was available and it did not matter where they came from. Just like Cliff Richards, who had come from London while Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch, from his backing band the Shadows, had come from Newcastle.

However, we settled on one of the guitarists who had stood in for Steve during one of the nights on which he went walkabout. Ray Taylor had been playing for "Turk Thrust and the Y-fronts", who all hailed from the Dagenham area in Essex and were a good band. What I liked about Ray was that he was a quiet sort of person who just got on with the job. He was a great player who found his way around the neck of his guitar with ease, and at times he seemed to add just that little bit more to the playing to which we had become accustomed with Steve. He had improvised very well with some of the vocal harmonies, and considering that he had only played with us twice, I was sure that he would be able to take over Steve's roll. Ray assured us that he did not want to be considered as another Steve, that he wanted to be himself. It had to be accepted that he did things his way and was not going to be a copy of somebody who had been there before him.

Our fans that had become used to Steve created a further problem for us. They could not understand why we had replaced him on the very week that our first song reached the number-one spot on the charts. After all, he had been with us for a couple of years and now, once we had made it, we had given him the elbow. In hindsight, it was just plain bad luck, which had once again reared its ugly head and spat at us. It was something that we would have had to sort out at one time or another. However, what do you tell the fans when they asked us at every opportunity? The other rumour that got around pointed to the fact that Steve was very good looking and usually attracted most of the girls, mentioning that I had become very jealous of him and so had got rid of him in order that there was no competition within the band when it came to picking up the girls. I did not worry too much about this rumour, as I was never wanting in that department, although it did worry Norm who felt that it could damage the band's reputation.

Even Ray was treated badly, just as though it was him who had pushed Steve out. Norm used to hand out small printed flyers to the fans. Giving them some sort of explanation while telling us that once we started touring nationally it would all blow over. Unfortunately, it was a slow process, until the day that the real reason became headline news in all of the national newspapers. Once the truth came out suddenly, the pressure was off us. I've often wondered if it was Norm who leaked it all to the press, if it was it worked, but I would not have been a part of it had I known, because it just moved the spotlight from us and placed it squarely onto Steve, wherever he had ended up. I must add that it was the last time that I ever saw Steve, which hurt me in a big way. After all, he had been one of the very first original three members of the band, and we had grown up living next door to each other.

The roll call of honour was steadily growing. Billy the original roadie had joined the army, while Rick had been killed during that fateful drive back from the recording studios in London. This left only Colin and I from the original three line up, and Ginger and JB from the very first five-piece line up. We all started to wonder who was going to be the next victim.

The whole affair hit me the worse, and I found myself drowning my sorrows more than usual in a bottle of Johnny Walker. Many times, I went on stage feeling well under the weather, but somehow I managed to pull it off. If it had not been for Ginger, who managed to snap me out of it, I'm sure that the band would have folded up in the long term.

A couple of days before our one-month tour of London was due to finish, Norm informed us of the good news that he had extended our stay in London by a further two months, using the excuse that Regal records were about to release the second of my two records. They had been waiting for "Dog Day Afternoon" to start its slow slide back down the charts, not wanting to miss a single penny of its sales.

Because of its popularity amongst the young people, we returned to Top of the Pops a couple more times, and each time the crowds outside the studios were larger than the time before. These fans had kept the song at number one for almost four weeks, something that was unheard of in those days, for a new band. However, once it started its slide from the top slot, it dropped like a brick and disappeared out of sight very fast. This left our loyal fans believing that people had gone off the band and were not wanting to buy our records anymore. Unfortunately, the truth was that the record company had been caught with their pants down, totally unprepared for the potential response from the public. Because they had not pressed enough copies, there were no copies left on the shelves.

Regal was rushed into a position where they released the second record just to keep us in the public's eye. It went straight to the top in one week, surprising most of the critics and pundits of the day, and started to sell thousands of copies a day. Only this time it all looked genuine, there was no way that Norm could have manipulated that amount of sales around the country, although I could not stop wondering. Lucky for Regal records and myself, they used my song "Missing You" as the A-side and placed their song "Living my Life" on the B-side.

"Missing You" brought all of the old memories of the courtship that I had enjoyed with Jennifer flooding back to me. Every time I heard the song on the radio or sung it at a venue, it would bring a tear to my eyes. I had loved her so much, even if I had not shown my true feeling towards her and had at times treated her like dirt. I even felt bad that I had mistreated her in the way that I did. It's very funny but until the day it was released, I had not thought much about her, but if she had been around at that moment I would have been like putty in her hands. I even tried to locate her but it was no good. Norm found out from some friends that Jennifer's family had all moved away, but nobody seemed to know where they went; they just seemed to have vanished.

"Missing You" sat at number one for six weeks and, in that time, it established the band as one of the most sought-after acts in the country. Top-class work all over England suddenly started flooding in. Unfortunately, we had to complete our extra two-month gigs in the London area first. This meant that the big-money rewards for the band would have to wait for a couple more weeks. Nevertheless, it did not mean that I could not cash in our popularity, as Norm booked me into several musical TV programs. I was also invited along to chat shows, which were just starting to become the in thing at that time. A couple of stars would be invited on to the show and asked embarrassing questions about themselves. Norm felt that it would be good for my image and at least I was still being exposed to the public. However, it usually ended up with a bit of a bun fight, as each of the artists competed against each other for a slice of the publicity. It turned out that on each visit I scored above my competitors as I was asked to sing, or should I say mime, to my hit single "Missing You". It was amazing what an effect it had on the record release, as sales always seemed to increase the day after each show.

"Missing You" became a million seller. Unfortunately, I did not see too much of the money, which amazed me a little. After all, I had not only sung the song but I had also written it. Once again, Norm had to explain that the record cost around 5 shillings and 6 pence to the public. I then received one and a half pennies for each sale as my share, because I was the singer. Elvis had a better deal than me, as he used to receive two and a half pennies per record, while it was common knowledge in the UK that in her early recording days Petula Clarke only received half a penny for each single record sale.

This meant that at one and a half pennies, I received £6270 as my share. I only received 50% of the writing fee, which was 2 pence a record; because it had to be divided between the studio and myself as they had a song on the B-side. Even though the public had not wanted to hear the song and it never rated in the charts, they still got their 50% of that fee. So for writing the song I picked up a further £4167, giving me a grand total of around £10,500.

It was also about this time that I suddenly realised that Norm's cut of 1/6th came from the gross figure of what I earned, and so he walked away with nearly £2000 and with no expenses because I had to pay them. Then the studios deducted all the expenses incurred during the making of the record, which was known as studio time. Then there was all of the publicity generated during the record's release, especially in the press, and all of the countless free records that were given away to the masses of organisations that were to play it on their radio programs. Not to mention all of the public appearances I had to make, all at my own expense, to promote the record all over the place. Then, because the band accompanied me on these trips, I was also paying their wages. All of these payments, including income tax on the gross figure, came out of my share. I could not believe that neither Norm or Regal studios had any expenses whatsoever to pay, and that everything they had received was sheer profit.

In other words, I had financed the whole record deal, and for all of my troubles, instead of showing a handsome profit I was actually in debt to the tune of around £3000. The record company tried to calm me down by explaining that, as I sold more records, my share of the profits would grow. Bullshit, I told them, it was incredible that I had sold one million copies in the first place, but it was not the normal type of sales for a record. What if I had only sold half a million copies? Some top artists struggled to sell twenty thousand units. It was then suggested to me that I would make more money when I played the live shows. Because I was now a star, I could command much high fees. Yeah, and I would have to work very hard every single night to repay all of the losses I had just incurred, instead of taking it easy for a time. To me, the whole scene just seemed corrupt and I felt like walking away from it.

Until, that is, Ginger got me to one side, and explained that, if we had one more big hit, we could name our own price wherever we went. It seemed to calm me down for a time, but I could not help feeling bad that I had been ripped off. It was a good job that my Mother was not alive; she would have had a go at them. That loan that she had signed guarantor for me had suddenly gone up from just a couple of hundred pounds to well over three thousand.

It was no good me threatening to chuck it all in, because I knew they had my signature on a little piece of paper they called a contract and that they had me over a barrel. This would prevent me from recording for any other company, and anyway they were all hand in glove with each other. Therefore, I was stuck where I was for the moment and had to make the best of it. However, I was determined to make it as hard as possible for Regal. When we had signed the original contract, just in case they were caught with a lemon on their hands, they had been overcautious, only signing me for two years while giving them first option on a further two if I agreed, and there was just no way that I was going to resign with them. I decided to milk them for as much as I could in the publicity field, so that I could then negotiate with one of the other top companies, like EMI or Decca. It never occurred to me that most record companies paid exactly the same rates as one another.

However, I had overlooked one clause in the contract, which stated that I had to release four records, and because I had only released two, I still had to go back to the recording studios. Only, this time, I laid the law down to everybody; if I was paying then I was to have it all done my way. I told them that I was not paying for people to just sit around in the studios on their backside doing absolutely nothing; they could attach themselves to some other unsuspecting soul. At one time I told them that, as far as I was concerned, it would be easier if I just handed over £3000 and sat back for a couple of weeks taking it easy. Anyway, I choose the engineer I wanted and he worked solely for me, and there were to be no other people in the studio that I would have to pay for. Sadly, they still won the day, because unbeknownst to me they still charged me the same rate for the studio time as they had during the earlier session.

During the recording session, I insisted that they only use my songs, as they were what the public wanted to hear and the sales were my proof. When was the last time that they heard a radio request for one of their songs? After a heated argument, they relented on the condition that I use one of their musical directors to help me arrange the song. "How much is that going to cost me?" I sarcastically asked them.

That was the day that I was introduced to Benjamin Roberts. It was to be the start of a long, very friendly, and successful musical friendship. "Benj", as I started calling him, was to help me enormously with my writing by teaching me the theory of music and how to let it work for me. He let me write the songs and just assisted me in the adding of the music. I must admit that I thought I knew it all, but he showed me that I was only just scratching the surface. His suggestions of changing certain chords definitely improved some songs, like "It's Been a Long Time" and "Panhandle Blues", both of which I had written a couple of years earlier at Norms café. Even though we had been singing both songs in our repertoire ever since, Benj pointed out that a couple of the chord changes were out of order and complemented the song by making a few changes. I got so carried away, and enjoyed his company so much, that I started writing while in the studio with him. The contract held me to four more songs; I forgot all about it and went on to record six, such was the presence of Benj, and I thrived on his feedback with every line and note that I wrote.

While "Dripping Jack" was a tongue in cheek piss take of the guy with whom we had played earlier in our careers, I had written it purely as a B-side song, along with another little number that I called "Sitting Tight". Deep in my subconscious, I must have been thinking about Susan without realising it, because I came up with what I considered to be one of the best songs I had written to date and called it "I'll Find You". Without realising it, I was gradually changing my style. I had always insisted that I was a rocker while hating anything that resembled a ballad song. After all, I had been very critical of my heroes Elvis and Cliff when they sold out and started singing ballads. Unfortunately, here I was falling into the very same trap, and I knew that deep down it was the fairer sex that was having a bearing on the direction in which my singing was going to take me.

While recording "I'll Find You", Benj had talked me into using a wailing saxophone during one of the solos, and I must admit that its sound completely enhanced the whole record. It was unbelievable how something as simple as another completely new instrument could change the whole sound of a song. Up until then, the band had always been what became known as a three-guitar line up, a direct copy and reference to the highly successful Shadows that many bands used as their yard stick in those days and why not, as they had shown us all the way ahead. The only problem it gave us was how we would be able to perform "I'll Find You" live on stage without a saxophone. Quite simple, Benj told me, just add a sax to your line up. Yeah all right for you, I told him, you don't have to pay his wages. However, it did sound great on the record, and there was a good chance that it would enhance some of our other material. Benj was quick off the mark, telling me that he knew just the guy.

Terrance J Spall. Benj had used Terence in the studios before, but he preferred life on the road so, as long as he was not tied up with another band, Benj was sure he could talk him into joining us. I was curious as to the J in the middle of his name. Benj laughed and told me that it stood for Jesus. There was a story that went with it, that his old man had been told by his wife to register their child's birth. Unfortunately, he had called into the registration office on his way home from the pub after he'd had a skin full of ale. When asked by the clerk for the child's name, he had said it all a little too fast, and so the clerk had to keep asking him to repeat it. Then, as the clerk sat there awaiting a response, and asking him a further four times for the child's middle name, Terrance's Father became very frustrated and said "Jesus" and just shook his head. The clerk then entered Jesus as the middle name on the birth certificate and proceeded to ask what his surname was. However, a few of his closest friends just called him JC, and now you know why.

Benj made a few calls, and sure enough, Terrance was prepared to join the band after he was assured that we were a tight little outfit. Anyway, he had heard of us because of our chart success. I arranged a meeting with the band and we had a little run through, so that he became familiar with our material. To my surprise, everybody greeted him with open arms and we became one big happy family, which I was happy to support. Right from day one he became known to us all as JC, thanks to my telling the band about his birth certificate, and fair dues to him he took it all in good fun. Overnight, we became a three guitar, one saxophone line up.

By the time that I had finished in the studios, Norm sent us on our merry way once again to the north of England, where the locals had all been complaining that they were being starved of our music. By a pure stroke of luck and to my amazement, Hartlepool's was chosen as our base town, and from there we would be able to travel out daily to the venues. Up until that time Norm had no idea that I had a girlfriend in the town.

I wasted no time in contacting Susan the very day we arrived, so that we could pick up the pieces of our romance. Somehow, it never occurred to me that she might be dating anybody else. As far as I was concerned, I always thought that she would be waiting for me. Call it lady luck if you like, but my prayers were answered when she answered the call and we arranged to meet that night, as we did not have a booking.

Susan took me to a restaurant that she used frequently and we had a quiet evening together, catching up on each other's news and gossip. She made it plain that she had missed me, as I had missed her. I then surprised her by giving her a small silver brooch that I had bought especially for her. It must have been the first time in my life that I ever bought a girl a present, and it did the trick. For the very first time, she opened up and told me of her personal life, something she had not done in the past. She was still living with her Mother, who she helped to look after, and had never had a steady boyfriend. This I found hard to believe, as she was a very pretty girl, having all of her curves in the so-called right places. She worked as a secretary for a group of solicitors and her office was just down the road from where we were sitting. When I asked what they were known as, I could not help laughing as she told me "Barking, Larking and Farthing". When she asked why I was laughing, I had to admit that I thought she was going to say something else for the last name. I know she replied I get to hear that one every time I mention it to people. Can you imagine the sniggering I get when I have to tell people over the telephone. To her further embarrassment, a couple of people from her office appeared on the scene and made their way to our table. Unbeknown to me, when our record had reached the number one spot, she had told them that she knew me. Well, you can imagine that they did not believe her and took the fun out of her at every opportunity.

It was easy to see that they recognised who I was, because they just pushed into the conversation. Then, to her further embarrassment, they all wanted my autograph, something I obliged to do on the condition that they would give us a little space. Unfortunately, the little gathering also caught the attention of the other patrons around us. After a quick word with the proprietor, he moved us into a secluded corner and surprised us with a bottle of wine on the house. Now there was a novelty for me, up until then I don't think I had ever bought a bottle of wine in my life. Being the manly sort of guy, it was usually beer or spirits for me.

Anyway, once we were settled in, I told Susan not to worry as it did not worry me, I was used to it. She confided in me that she did not like crowds of people and publicity. I laughed and told her that the next day at work, she would be the centre of a lot of attention and leg pulling. The evening was not marred and I enjoyed every minute of it. At times I found myself holding her hands as we sat opposite each other, just looking at her beautiful face. We were too far apart to kiss, as the table was quite wide. That would have to come later but, for the moment, I had become putty in her beautiful warm hands.

As I've said before, I was sleeping with anyone that I could get into bed. However, there were just two girls whom I had really liked and I had not wanted to force either of them between the sheets. Jennifer had disappeared completely out of my life, and now I was completely in love with Susan and would give up everything just to be with her. It might sound a little corny and old fashioned that somebody like me could possibly change. However, I was getting older and I guess I was being made aware of the finer things in life. Our conversation became very loving and romantic, and the spell was not broken when we were asked to leave because the restaurant was shutting up shop. Susan suddenly grabbed my hand as we made our way out of the building, and told me she did not want to go home. Laughing and giggling, we started to walk slowly down the road that took us past a small hotel. We both looked at each other and, without a word being spoken; we walked hand in hand over the road and booked in for the night. That night, we both let our barriers down and for the very first time we slept together, an experience that I will always remember and cherish.
Chapter 4

## Dream or Nightmare

I could not believe how fast "I'll Find You" shot up to the top twenty singles chart. Within just one week, it was sitting at the number one spot, with reported first week sales of nearly one hundred thousand. It was unbelievable, and was way beyond the expectations of Regal, Norm and Myself. The response from the television companies also caught us all off guard and I was offered Television work every single day if I wanted it. However, I was tied to the existing contractual bookings at a lower rate of pay, which was a little bit hard to accept. However, I knew that once we had completed them, Norm would more than likely quadruple our fee.

The B-side of the record was "Dripping Jack"; we had chosen this particular number because it was a good rocker of a song. Therefore, it would make up for the fact that the A-side was a little slow. In saying slow, I mean that you could actually understand every word I sang. It was a well known fact that with most of the very fast rocking songs, not many people could understand the words, which is why a lot of people end up singing completely different words to those on the record.

I told Susan that I had written the song especially with her in mind, as a sign of my love for her. At first, she did not believe me but slowly, as I explained all of the words to her, she accepted that what I told her was true. Once, when the press asked me why it was slow and whether I was going to be singing ballads from now on, I told them that it was not a ballad but a nice slow blues number. They seemed to walk away contented, which proves something that I've always believed, that half the time the press do not know what they're talking about, and you can usually baffle them with bullshit. Deep inside, I knew that I was going down the same road that Elvis and Cliff had taken, and I had criticised them heavily for it. I guess it was a case of never say never, because one day it will come back to haunt you and bite you on the bum.

Susan and I spent a lot of time together whenever the band's heavy engagement schedule allowed. During that time, she took me home to introduce me to her Mother, who lived on a council estate almost in the middle of the town. However, she did not tell her that I was a rock and roll singer, deciding to keep it from her because of the bad remarks that she would make every time one was featured on the television. Susan had even made sure that she did not watch the Top of the Pops on Thursday nights, so that she could not guess who I was.

While we were with her Mother, Susan started talking about marriage, and somehow it did not come as a shock or a surprise. For the first time in my life, I could actually consider settling down with somebody, especially if it were Susan. I could not believe the changes that were coming over me because of her influence. Even while singing, I would not bother searching out the crowd for the special girl I would like to meet in the dressing room after the gig. They were there, and I knew we needed them to buy more of our records, but in Susan, I believed that I had found the right girl for me to settle down with and start a family life. Is that what usually happens to everybody in the end? Whenever you are in the street and you see a seventy-year-old guy hobble past you using a walking stick, ask yourself what exploits that wrinkled-up face has been through in its seventy years.

I started to believe that I had been no different from all of the other young people who had come before me. I guess it could be aligned to evolution. What was happening to me had happened to millions of other people over the years; it's called growing up, and I was going to take full advantage of it. I had made up my mind that I could spend a lifetime with Susan and wanted to enjoy every minute of the experience.

While Susan and I were spending a lot of time together, Norm did not approve of our relationship and, at one time he pulled me to one side to make his feeling known to me. He went on to explain that it would not be good for my image if it became known that I had a regular girl friend, telling me to look at what had happened when it leaked out that John Lennon was in fact married. He went on to explain that it was the young teenage girls who were buying most of my records, and that it was those same girls that mobbed us wherever we went. By doing so, they guaranteed that we would receive the right publicity from the press each day. He continued to tell me that we had received enough bad press during the past couple of years to last us a lifetime. I cut him off before he finished, telling him that every time we think about it, something else happens, and I did not need it to happen right now. Anyway, he went on to tell me that it was not good for me to be seen with her. However, when I told him that we were thinking about getting married, he cringed and distorted his face in a look of horror. As he walked away, he could not help himself, and told me that when that day came it would be the end of my lucrative career. I quickly replied that at least it would not cost me £3000 every time he wanted me to make another record.

Susan started accompanying me to some of the bookings and, once again, Norm did not like it, especially as she was usually by my side whenever I signed autographs as we left the venues together. Although, to be fair to her, she did stand slightly behind me, and, in this way I'm sure some of the fans felt that she was part of the publicity entourage that was by now following the band around. However, it became a problem for us to have a quiet meal together, because somebody would usually recognise us in the restaurant. Then our holding of hands and whispering sweet nothings in each other's ears became impossibility. Not to mention that I was getting writer's cramp from the constant signing of autographs, but I could not complain. This was the life and direction I had chosen to follow and it was these people who were paying my wages. For a time, I'm sure that Susan realised this, but she always said that I should be able to switch off just as she does when she leaves work. Sorry, I told her, adding but, unfortunately, I'm on call twenty-four hours day. Up until then, I had been living a dream and told her that I had lived it to the full, while now it was a case of changing the direction of that dream so that it included Susan. She smiled as she told me that she hoped it would not always be like this, as it was like living in a drinking glass while the world watched our every move.

Then, all too suddenly, our tour of the North was over, and we were directed by Norm to head back to London. It's funny, but I had noticed that there was a completely different music scene in the north of England, compared to the south and London area. It was as though there was an imaginary line drawn through the map, somewhere near Watford Gap service station just north of London. Even the Beatles had realised this; after becoming the top band in the Liverpool-Manchester area, they had moved to London in order that they could take on the whole country, and look how that had worked out for them.

When bands visited the north, they always played in the workmen's clubs and there were hundreds of them, all very large venues that seated hundreds of people. In this way, they could earn very large fees. In Hartlepool's alone at that time there were reported to be well over 180 clubs. This meant that you could play a different one each night and not return for six months. In London, there were no workingmen's clubs; most of the venues for the bands were very large public houses dance hall venues and hotels. Unfortunately, they could not hold crowds as vast as in the North, and so they paid smaller fees. However, London was where it was all happening; it was where the Swinging Sixties got its name and the whole world was watching what we were doing. It was also very easy to get the television work there, as there were several studios to record the music and chat shows that were eagerly being snatched up by the major Television networks.

Back in London, I was presented with a big problem and for a time I did not know how to handle it. Norm had told me that an arrangement had been made for me to go to the Regal Studios so that we could all discuss my contract, even though it still had a little time to run. Therefore, I made a few discreet enquiries around a couple of the other studios, to see if I could better myself. I tried ringing EMI and the Decca organisation, but did not have too much success, as they were not prepared to talk over the phone. Because I did not want to be seen entering their offices, I did not take it any further. However, I struck it lucky with one of the smaller companies, known as Becker Records, and during a conversation I agreed to meet one of their managers over a cup of coffee in Carnaby Street, a place to be seen in those days.

I was pleasantly surprised that the person I had to meet was in fact a woman. She introduced herself as Wanda Becker, chief publicity manager of the company and daughter of its owner. Wanda had been sent to listen to what I had to say. I explained that my contract was coming up for renewal and that I was looking for a better deal. She became very interested. Her first offer caught me quite unawares and surprised me to a point where I did not know what to say. She had told me that they were only interested in signing me if I went solo. To me, that was a dirty word and I just told her out right that it was not possible. After all, I had grown up with some of these guys, and they depended on me to make a living. I had lived next door to them and they had given up their jobs to come on the road with me. As she continued, she told me not to take it personally but as a solo act, I was more marketable to the public and we would all make a lot more money out of the deal. I told her that it was out of the question. Then I paused for a couple of seconds before asking what if I only used my lead guitarist, who arranges most of my work. However, she was having none of this, telling me it's you or nothing. And with that, the meeting came to an abrupt end. Just as Wanda was about to leave, she handed me her business card and told me to give her a ring if I changed my mind.

I spent days wondering what the hell to do next. Susan was the only person that I confided in, during one of my daily phone calls to her. Fair dues to her, she just listened, not wanting to become involved, although I told her that she was involved as it was my future and that she was to be part of it.

My mind was taken off of my contractual problems for a couple of days as the band was invited to the BBC sound studios at Maider Vale near Marble Arch, to record a session for the very popular Saturday Club show at that time. It was all very exciting, knowing that the Beatles had all sat in the very same chairs that we now found ourselves sitting in. The show used to go on air from 10am to midday on a Saturday morning, and would usually consist of the top records and artist of the day. With the "Convertibles", the whole program had been dedicated to us, and so it gave us a chance to play some songs that television and radio audiences had never heard before. With this in mind, I came up with some of my earlier material, songs like "Please Help Me I'm Married" and "A Momentary Lapse of Freedom". However, it did not go down too well with some of the fans, one of whom rang the radio station complaining that the songs were too lovy dovy. He went on to tell me that I knew nothing about a woman until I met one in court. Lucky for us, he was cut off before he said something that the station would regret. However, it was only a small hiccup and the show as a whole went down well for us. In fact, most of the callers wanted to ask JC questions; he was fast taking over my role as the sex symbol in the band and the girls all swooned over him. With my relationship with Susan blossoming, I did not mind. Since we had been apart, I had not looked at one girl while having bedroom thoughts on my mind.

The day of the big meeting between Norm, me and the big wigs at Regal Records came. They wasted no time in getting down to the main topic: of extending my contract. However, Norm was one step ahead of them, demanding that the old one be torn up and a completely new one that took into consideration my popularity in the country at the moment be drawn up. One of the guys was quick to point out that my popularity could die tomorrow, as had happened to a few other up-and-coming stars in the past. Then Norm silenced him with the swift reply that there was also the chance that I could become as big as Elvis, a remark that brought in the leader of the Regal boardroom team, exclaiming that was what they wanted to talk to us about. He felt that I might not make it that high, but he felt that I could at least rival Cliff, if I went solo just as he had done. Wow there was a deafening silence in the room for a couple of minutes; it was as if you could cut the thick atmosphere with a knife. I was the first to speak, beating Norm to the punch. Telling them all that I've come this far with my friends, and I'll get further with or without the record companies help. The top man replied that he did not think so, adding that it was Regal that gave me my very first break.

I could feel myself starting to lose my temper, and found myself telling them that I had just lined their pockets with gold, the proceeds from two number one hit records, while my own pockets had become lighter to the tune of £3000 per record. I could hardly call it a big break could I? I went on to say that in my language I'd call that a big loss.

I was asked to hear out their proposal before I made any further comments. Once I saw the broader picture, their proposal might make a little more sense to me.

They felt that if I went solo they would be able to market me more easily than if I was a member of a band. There were more openings for talent like mine on the big shows around the country. Then there was television work, all of which would pay off handsomely. They went on to propose that I get two and a half pence as the singer for each record I sold and five pence as the songwriter. They accepted the point that their songs were old fashioned and not what the young people of the day were searching for. My songs had been well and truly tested on the market and they liked the results. This could all be offered to me on a new five-year contract, while giving them first option on a further five when the time arrived.

Norm looked at me and had to admit that it was a good offer and that I should consider it closely before making a decision. Therefore, we all took time out for a break and drink, agreeing to resume in an hour's time.

I was still devastated when Norm went all over it again so that I fully understood what was being offered. However, I had to point out that I was being asked once again to sack the only friends that I had. They were people that I had grown up with, one of them had been my neighbour, and how the hell do you tell people like that that you don't want them anymore. Without their help, it's a good bet that I would not have been where I was today. Jesus, I shouted, in the early days, some of these guys even bought me the very food that kept me alive. It was like having to cut my own nose off to spite my face. I rang Susan at work and she did not know what to say to me. After all, she did not like my lifestyle with the band in the first place; as far as she was concerned, maybe life would be better if I was on my own. However, at no time did she mention that to me. Instead, she told me that as I was the leader, it was me who had to make the big decision. Then I would not be able to blame anybody else but myself if it were to go wrong for me.

I was first to speak when we all returned to the boardroom to continue the discussion. I started by saying, if I agreed to their proposal; there were a couple of minor things that I wanted for myself. Firstly, that Benjamin would be with me at all times in the studio and that he was paid by Regal. Secondly, and I knew that this was going to be hard to sell, that I retain Ginger as my lead guitarist. He had become so good by that time that he was considered to be one of the best in the country. He knew my work; he knew how to lift my performance to a higher level. If I were to play live anywhere, he would be able to tell all of the other musicians that would accompany me exactly what was expected of them. If, for some reason, they bombed out, then Ginger would be able to hold it all together. Furthermore, I felt that he would be an asset to the studios, as his playing was second to none. To my surprise, it was agreed without debate, just as if they knew exactly what I was going to ask for. Everybody was amazed that the deal had been concluded so quickly, having been prepared for a long drawn-out fiery affair. Norm and I were then told that they were just drawing up the new contract and that I would be able to sign it before we left.

Ten minutes later, the door opened and in walked Wanda Becker, along with a secretary carrying the document. As I spoke to her by name, Norm was quite shocked to know that I already knew her. I told him that we have had a brief meeting in the past, but where she fits in with this lot, I've not got a clue. Wanda was very nice and spoke to me as if we were old friends. Nevertheless, I was determined to know where she fitted in before I signed anything. She then proceeded to explain to Norm and me that Regal Records were a subsidiary of her Father's company Becker Records, and she usually handled all of the legal documents for both companies. I could not resist asking if she'd had a hand in me being able to hang onto Ginger. She just smiled and told me that I owed her for that one.

I had been presented with one of the hardest tasks I would ever have to face in my entire lifetime. How the hell does one go about sacking lifelong friends? For Colin it was going to be the hardest; he was one of the original three in the photo in my album. The other member in that photo was Steve and I'd already sacked him for being constantly drugged up. Of the two that joined us in the town's square during our basking days, which seemed like a million years before, JB had been a loyal and supportive friend, never questioning whatever I asked of him, while his mate Ginger was the guy I hoped I'd saved from the scrap heap. Mind you, he was every bit as good as I had made him out to be. His playing ability left me behind years ago.

Billy our first roadie had gone into the army and nobody had heard a word from him, although there was a rumour going around that he was killed fighting terrorists in Aden while serving in the Middle East. Then there was Dave Allen, the new roadie, and Ray Taylor, who had taken over from Steve on rhythm guitar; both had become very good friends and would have gone to the end of the world for me if had asked them.

I was sure that JC need not worry; he was so good that he would fit into another band without too much trouble. Bands would be banging on his door that night.

It was to be the hardest of decisions of my life so far, and so Norm came to the meeting to assist me. I was thankful that he did as I broke down completely in front of the band. Gone was the hard exterior shell that I used to throw up around me in order to rule the roast. That meeting brought me to tears in front of my friends, although I doubted that they would want to know me as a friend the next day. Norm spelt it out in as light a way possible, not wanting to offend anybody. The last thing we wanted was a big fight over what had been decided. To say that the band took it badly is on the lighter side of the scale; they were devastated and completely lost for words. The depression that set in that afternoon was deep and hurting, and some of the members would not recover from it lightly.

It hurt that they had been through the hard times while pooling our money to survive. We had always been there to support each other during the bad times. Now it was all over; they had nowhere to go and I felt like it was me letting them all down. Unbeknownst to me, Norm had taken Ginger on one side, warning him about what was about to happen and telling him not to get to involved as I had managed to secure a deal for him that we would both explain to him later. One thing that was not taken into consideration was the fact that we had one more booking to perform that night, to complete the latest tour in the London area.

What a mess that turned out to be. The atmosphere was so bad that half the audience knew that we had internal problems. Nobody smiled and jumped about like we usually did on stage. In fact, we played like morons and it's a wonder that the audience did not want their money back after the dud performance that we gave them. I would have loved to go out on a high, giving the audience one of the best shows that they had ever seen; instead, we probably gave them one of the worst.

I had come to a crossroads in my search for fame and fortune, and my whole life now depended on which direction I took. There was a lot riding on this decision, so I was going to have to get it right. For me there would be no turning back from here.

The first thing I did after going through hell that night was to ring Susan, to try and get a little sympathy from somebody. She never really said much; instead, she just left it to me to get it all off my chest and to give her all of the details. The only remarks she made was that it had to be my decision, as nobody could help me make my mind up. Whether it turns out to be the right or wrong decision, it was something that I would have to live with for the rest of my life. After all it was me that wanted to get ahead, and for the moment I had just cleared one of life's little hurdles. I then told her that Norm was working on a national tour, only this time it was to be completely different. There would be no staying in very small bed and breakfasts and travelling to the bookings each day. This time, I was to be driven in a large chauffeur-driven car, and I had managed to get Dave Allen, our old roadie the job. He was to drive me to the bookings and there would be hotel accommodation arranged close by each booking. The next day, we would all move on to whatever town or city I would be singing in. In this way, they were hoping to play most of the major towns and cities. Gone were the days of playing in the very small and pokey little village halls. Now it was time to play the big theatres and the larger of the workingmen's clubs in every corner of the country. The only thing I was not happy with was that, at each venue, a support band would be waiting to back me, and so each night Ginger would have to teach a new band my song arrangements. The good news was that the venues had to supply and pay for the bands out of their own pockets. At last now I might be able to make a little money from my chosen profession.

Then there were going to be several televisions shows that I would be involved with. I told Susan that I would let her know so that she could watch me sing. Somehow, I did not think that she would be watching; she had not seen me sing for a long time and would not usually bother to go to the shows. I also neglected to tell her that Wanda Becker was going to accompany me as my personal manager. It would be Wanda's job to make sure that I was happy and that everything ran smoothly.

This separation between us was very hard, and I longed to see her each night. Every day the separation became more frustrating, as we did not know when we would next see each other. It was made harder for me by the fact that she was constantly talking about marriage, and there was no way that we could get together to discuss the arrangements.

Because of Norm's dislike of our relationship, we decided not to tell him what we were planning. We felt that we could get married and keep it secret from everybody, but the way we were going there was no way that we were going to be able to get together in a church. I let Susan have the last say, because she wanted to make all of the loose arrangements for a registry office marriage, and the very first time I was near Hartlepool's we would just go for it. There would be no other people involved; for a best man we would just grab somebody off the street. I told her that it sounded good to me and that she could go ahead and do whatever she wanted. At least this way she was happy, and I'd cross the many bridges in front of me when I got to them.

As I came off stage after performing at the Plymouth Pavilion, Norm was there to inform me that there was a police officer waiting for me in the dressing room. Better hide the pot I told him and he laughed. I added that it was under the bed. However, the mood changed drastically as I entered the room to be confronted by the officer, and I was asked to take a seat before he started talking to me. With that, I knew it was going to be bad. My first reaction was that they were going to arrest me for something, but for what I had no idea. It could not be my Mother, as she had died the year before. My brain was still racing as I tried to work it all out. I even looked into the sergeant's face, just hoping that there would be a clue of some kind. For some reason, Susan's name did not enter my head, as things between us were going so well. Therefore, you can imagine my reactions as the sergeant asked me if I knew a Susan Russell. The alarm bells started ringing in my head, and I'm sure I didn't hear every word he said. Somehow, my brain must have filtered out the words that were irrelevant, and all I heard was that she had been in an accident. I jumped up, wanting to see her, my brain not realising that she was up the top end of the country while I was at the bottom. I don't really know what I said but I must have bombarded the officer with many questions, and I would bet that most of them were the same one. By this time, Norm had come into the room and was trying to console me. Somehow, he did not manage it and so a doctor was called to meet me at my hotel, where Norm said he would take me.

That night I was very heavily sedated, and Norm knew that I would take off for Hartlepool the minute I awoke. With this in mind, he cancelled five days' bookings, giving everyone some breathing space to see what I would do next. Just as he thought, once I awoke I got Dave to take me north to see Susan. Wanda accompanied me, I guess just so she could keep an eye on her Father's investment. It was a good job she did; otherwise I would have gone off my head being stuck in the back of a car for several hours all on my own.

By the time we reached the hospital, it was too late. She had passed away a couple of hours earlier, leaving me devastated. I did not know what to do, or where to go. I just did not know anything. All the time Wanda kept me within touching distance, half expecting me to pass out at any time.

There was even worse news to come as the doctor told me that she had been about two months' pregnant at the time of the accident. That made my loss twice as hard to bear. I had never thought about being a Father before, and the very day that it entered my head, it had all been suddenly taken away from me.

Susan had been travelling in the front of a taxi, and while waiting at traffic light junction, a big truck had driven right into the back of the taxi. Susan had been propelled through the front windscreen, badly mutilating her face as she hit the glass. Her left hand had almost been severed at the same time. The taxi driver had been impaled on the steering column after the wheel broke away and killed, while the truck driver walked away with a few cuts and bruises. I think if I could have met up with him at that very moment I would have killed him with my bare hands. During those days, seat belts were only just being fitted to cars and it was not compulsory to wear them. My one thought was, if only she had worn one. However, you cannot change history. Maybe you can learn by it.

This devastating loss to me was more than I could take and I dropped into a drunken, drug-induced fog, not knowing what was going on around me for several days. However, it was Wanda and dear old Ginger who managed to drag me out of it, and convinced me that I needed to work so that I could start to put it all behind me. I tried telling them that I did not want to forget Susan. They rephrased what they had just said by telling me that life goes on, and that I needed an interest. Besides, a lot of people were depending on me for a living. There was a well-oiled machine waiting in the wings, all ready to go.

With their coaching, I made an effort to get back on the road. However, I made it plain that I did not want to sing "I'll Find You" as it would be too hurtful and I doubted very much whether I would be able to finish the song. I had written it especially for Susan, so how could I sing it to a person who was no longer with me?

I picked up the tour, missing about two weeks of the bookings, which were later tagged on to the end so that nobody would be disappointed. By this time most of the country knew of my loss; it was being spread all over the press every day during my short break. This meant that there was going to be a little more interest than usual at the first couple of shows, to see how I held up to the strain. In other words, they were looking for a new story to crucify me with the next day. It was the old tall-poppy syndrome, which always seems to pop its ugly head up occasionally.

The big day came and I was starting to get a few butterflies in my stomach, not knowing if I could go through with it at the last minute. I'd started the ball rolling, but had I unleashed some sort of monster that I could not control. However, as I was about to take the stage, I walked over to Ginger and thanked him for getting me this far. I then dropped a bombshell when I asked him to include "I'll Find You" as my first song of the bracket. I knew that I could rely on him to tell all of the other members on stage.

I walked out onto the stage to rapturous applause, just as the band struck up with the introduction of my latest hit record,"I'll Find You". Then, as I opened my mouth, Susan just came pouring out, as I relived our relationship and love for each other. At times, I could feel tear drops running down my cheeks, but it was a wonderful feeling to be back on stage once again while remembering my love for Susan at the same time. As the saxophone solo took over, I could not help thinking that it sounded better than usual. As I turned around, I was astonished to see JC blowing his heart out in the manner that I had been accustomed to with the old band. Unbeknownst to me, Ginger had talked the powers that be into bringing back JC to replace the mediocre guy we had been using since I went solo. As I raised my hand to acknowledge his presence on stage, he just winked back and continued to blow his heart out. The rest of the show was a bit of a blur to me as I went from song to song, prompted by my guardian angel Ginger, who stood almost behind me. He talked to me during the whole show, explaining where we went next. I cannot thank him enough for what he has done for me over the years; he is one of the only true friends I still have, who is not with me purely for the money that I generate. I'm sure if he were given a choice; he would do it all for free if I asked him. He just loves his music and it's all he lives for.

I was well received by the audience, who applauded me right through the whole show. Being the good showman that he was, Ginger milked them for every ounce of response that he could get and, as we finished he encouraged them to call me back on stage for an encore.

I was also surprised that I was well received by the press, which had turned out to be some sort of achievement for me. Usually I was portrayed as the villain of the peace. I was the guy who was putting all sorts of strange ideas into the heads of the young people of the day. However, one jerk from a smaller local newspaper described me as the first crooner that Britain had seen for many years. He went on to have the audacity to compare me with Johnny "Cry Baby" Ray, an American singer who had been very big in the middle to late fifties with songs like "Josephine" and "Crying". There was just no way that I had rubbed onions into my eyes before I went on stage to sing, as had been claimed of Ray in the USA; the rumour helped curtain his career. With me, as I sang "I'll Find You" what you saw was what you got; it was Johnny Morris being as truthful and sincere as was possible. To back me up in this claim, during that whole day I did not have one drink or take one single pill. Mind you, the adrenalin that rushed though my body was enough to keep me on a high for almost twenty-four hours.

From that day on, I was no longer the true rocker I always thought I was. That day, I became a ballad singer and loved every minute of it. I willingly dropped into line behind the two greatest idols in my life, Elvis and Cliff. Almost every song that I wrote from that day on was about Susan and the very short relationship that had been stolen from me. I guess in a way it got me over this major catastrophe in my life although, if she had lived, I wonder if she would have become fed up with constantly being mentioned in some way in every single song that I wrote. Who knows? She might even have used it as a means of getting a divorce. Now, there's a good idea for a story and would possibly make a good song.

From that day, I think the best song I wrote was "Reach Out and Touch the One you Love", followed by "Same Old Love"; both went to the number-one spot for me. A couple of notable B-sides were "If I Could See You Again" and "Living on the Wrong Side of Heaven". I guess I was very lucky to have so many top-ten hits compared, with other artists of the day.

I wrote tongue-in-cheek B-side songs, but most still managed to make it into the charts one way or another. Up and coming artists of the day even asked me to write for them, mainly because they wanted to cash in on my name, but it did not worry me. However, I was still amazed to see them climb the charts; while some faltered others ended up in the top ten. This encouraged me to start experimenting with assumed names, and was also amazed to see that some of the songs still made it into the charts. At least I realised then that I had a gift for writing that was being accepted by the public. I used silly names like Willy Wacky, Henry T Ford and O.G Long, a term used by the British army to describe their jungle clothing; they called it Olive Green Long, for long trousers. Then there was KD Short, for Khaki Drill Shorts, and so on. I was never short of names and would use them at every opportunity, even if I were signing into a nightclub. I sometimes wondered how I would have got on if I had signed on the dole in this way.

Norm tried to launch my career into the USA market, and spent a small fortune of his own money trying to make it work. That was a laugh for a start; I never did work out why he did not con me into financing the whole venture, so it would only be me who lost my money, leaving his wealth safely locked away in the bank. I always had this funny cartoon picture of Norm in my head, standing in front of a bank with his hands neatly placed behind his back, telling passersby that there was a lot of money behind him. Yeah, it might be behind him, but it sure as hell was not in his pockets when it came to his shout at the pub.

Anyway, the American venture never really worked out for me; somehow, the American youngsters did not appreciate the style of music that I was trying to put across. Norm had allowed Ginger to accompany me to New York so that he could assist the American musicians who backed me on a couple of gigs and television work around town. Wanda also came along at the insistence of her Father, assisting me on with the TV and publicity. However, she was also looking for openings for other acts that her Father had under contract. I'm sure Norm was not aware of this at the time; otherwise he would have thought that she was having a free ride on our backs. Mind you I cannot blame them for using the situation to help her company. I guess in the end it was all good publicity for me.

Wanda was there to make life easier for me. She would make all of the arrangements, whether it was for business or pleasure. She saw to it that all of the finer details were sorted out and especially to my liking. It was nice; for the first time in my life I could sit back and take it easy. However, it was a little too easy at times, as I would spend a lot of the time drinking. I guess while I was out having to chase up everything myself there was not enough time to drink, whereas now I seemed to have a lot of time on my hands. It's only natural, and far too easy to go to the bar fridge to kill a few hours in the hotels. At times, it felt like Wanda was Mothering me, but then, at other times, she might have been making a play for me. Either way, I was not interested. At that time, Susan was still playing a large part in my life. It would be safe to say that, in thought, she took up every single minute of every single day.

However, on one particular evening I almost let my guard down, as all three of us spent the evening in my room having a meal and listening to records. The drink ran freely and it was not long before we were all very drunk. The trouble started when Ginger somehow crawled into the spare bedroom and crashed out, leaving Wanda and myself sitting on the settee together. It was all nice and cosy when Wanda started asking me personal questions about my life, telling me her problems and adding that there was not a man in her life at the moment. Now I know I was drunk but I could sense what was coming next and dreaded the moment. After all how was I going to reject my boss's daughter's advances? I'm only human and I am a hot-blooded male at that. However, for the first time in my life I did not need female company, the fact that it was about to be handed to me on a plate made no difference. No, whatever thoughts went through my head, they always came back to Susan and the short time that we had spent together.

However, the whole problem was safely taken out of my hands when Wanda got up to go into the kitchen to get another beer from the fridge. By the time she got back, I had genuinely passed out, or so I was told the next day. Wanda somehow had to struggle back to her own room, leaving me on the settee all on my own.

We spent two weeks in New York performing gigs, but sadly it did not work out and we had to return dragging our tails behind us as they say. I guess it was plain for all to see that what we were doing was directed towards the British audiences, and that the Americans were off in another direction. I'll never forget Norm's face when he told us how much money he'd invested in the whole venture. However, he conceded that in the end, when everything was counted up and weighed against each other, he had broken even. Even though we did not make it big, we still sold a lot of records on that side of the Atlantic. With an audience the size of America's, a mediocre record could sell a million copies quite easily. You could just not compare it to Great Britain's hard up young record buying teenagers. When I think about it, Cliff had the same problem and never made it big in America, but it did not stop him from dominating the charts in England for a very long time and becoming highly successful.

When we returned to the UK, Norm made sure that I was kept very busy to ease Susan from my mind. If I was not on the road, then I was in the studio writing and recording. Mind you, it was the studio work that I liked the most, especially as I was working alongside Benj and Ginger. By this time Ginger was having some success with writing himself and playing instrumentals. It's quite ironic that his own small hit records were all instrumentals, because that's what he did best, and yet his big successes came with writing songs for other people. Ginger was the first to admit that he could not sing a note himself. Then, as an experiment, I recorded one of his songs called "Living Dangerously" and, to our joy; it got into the top five of the charts. I was pleased for Ginger; at least now I knew that, if my bubble burst, at least he would be able to make his own way in the music industry. This was backed up further by Benj, who used him whenever possible while recording other stars at Regal Records.

The next few years are still bit of a blur for me, as one hit record ran into another, as one very large bottle of beer ran into the next big bottle of whisky, washing down a mixture of pills and drugs. At times, it amazed me that I did not rattle. During all of those years, I must have been a horrible bit of work, and I would not blame anybody for not wanting to come near me, including the female sex.

However, it was nice to know that Ginger stood by me during all those dark years and that he was always there when it mattered. What I find hard to understand is that he was into everything just like me, but somehow he could control his intake, whereas I kept going until I passed out. I don't know how he did it, but I sure wish he would tell me his little secret. Then we could market the idea and both become millionaires.

I don't know how he managed it, but after a very long spell, he finally managed to get me back on the rails and onto a program to dry me out. At the time, I was not too appreciative but, in hindsight, it saved me from sliding into an ever-widening black hole from which I would never have been able to extract myself. Ginger had told me that the writing was on the walls, that my hits were drying up and that people did not want to book me because of my drinking habits. At first, it was hard but I stuck with it, and slowly I could sense myself regaining some sort of normality over a number of weeks.

What I also remember about those years is that Wanda showed an ever-increasing interest in me, fussing around me at every opportunity. However, even in my state of mind, I was still aware of what was going on around me, and I constantly kept my guard and trousers well and truly up. I don't think that we ever slept together, although I know that's what everybody would say. I like to think that our relationship was like the old proverbial saying; we were just good friends.

However, towards the end of what could only be described as wandering around in the wilderness while I was drying out, things were starting to look brighter between us. I was slowly sorting out my personal problems and releasing from my mind the loss I had suffered when Susan was taken away from me so dramatically. This opened the possibility that maybe we could make something more of the relationship in the future. However, it was a well-known fact that her Father did not like the thought of me actually having a relationship with her. He considered me to be a bit of a has-been and washed up, with no future in the music industry. He made no bones about the fact that I was a junkie and that nothing would ever change me, no matter what I tried. He would constantly tell her that he did not want to throw his good money at a dead course. Many times, he told her to take a look around, if she didn't believe what he was saying. There are far better fish in the sea, and they could run rings around this guy. He's a no hoper, somebody who will never change, so why do you want to waste your time on him, he would constantly tell her. I'm sure if it had not been for Wanda he would have dropped me from his Regal label years before.

For some reason, Wanda must have believed in me and trusted that eventually I would come right and return to the top where she considered I should be. After all, she had seen me at my best during those early years, so she knew what I was capable of; it was just a case of getting the demons out of my head, and trying to live life at the full once more. Thinking about it now, I'm sure that Wanda used a lot of her own money to get me back on the rails. The whole crisis must have placed an enormous strain on the Father Daughter relationship, and I hope they were able to sort it all out and not drag their family down. The last thing I would have wanted was for them to break apart over my stupidity. Mind you, what happened to me was the way it was meant to be; I had played life to the full and enjoyed the most part of it. For me to say that I would have changed one part of it is to admit that I'd done something wrong, and that's not the way it should be. I had played the cards that had been dealt me and I was happy with the path I had taken. If there were things to change, then now is the time, and that was what I was trying to achieve at that very time in my life. For all that had gone wrong over the years, I blamed nobody; it was life and I just accepted that as being part of it.

Anyway, I finally I invited Wanda out to a little restaurant I knew, known as the Gravy Train, in the east end of London, and we took a table in one of the corners near a small window. The meeting suddenly brought back to me the happy times that I'd had spent years earlier; it reminded me of my courting days, first with Jennifer and then later with Susan. Not being able to contain myself, I had to tell Wanda, who took it all very calmly. After a few seconds, she added and even to the point of no sex, which left me a little embarrassed. However, she was right; of all the girls that I had been out with, it was the ones I thought I was in love with who I had been cautious about sleeping with.

The evening went fine and a couple of times I found myself touching her hand. She even kissed me on the cheek a couple of times, but that was as far as it went. When I took her home, I dropped her off outside of her front door, gave her a kiss and I was on my way home. I had arranged a trip to visit Paris, and told her that when I returned maybe we could go out together and let our hair down for a couple of hours. Therefore, that evening I was in very high spirits but not the drinking type.

Unfortunately, as was the case during most of my life, whenever things started to look good for me, fate would show her ugly hand and slap me back down to size. This time it reared its ugly head in the shape of a taxi, by reminding me of the death of Susan and how she had been so dramatically taken from me.

I was sitting in the back seat of a taxi, watching the world pass by as we raced towards Heathrow airport. I was in a jovial mood, relishing the thought that my career had been kick started once again, and that I was being given a second chance. I was going to Paris where I was to film a couple of television interviews about the forthcoming release of my latest record in France. Looking at my watch, I could sense that we might miss the arranged flight and so I offered the driver an extra £20 if he managed to get me there on time. It is during the silent times like this that your mind wonders and I found myself planning my future in the music industry.

Occasionally the driver would ask me questions or make a remark on the weather, but it was basically a quiet ride. Until, that is, we came to a set of traffic lights just before the airport. Even the thought of traffic lights sent tingles down my spine. Looking over the driver's shoulder, I could see that as we approached the lights were showing green, so the driver did not drop his speed but just drove straight over. Suddenly and without warning, a large car appeared from our left and drove straight into the side of the taxi. The force of the impact sent us spinning into the air, and I can remember us hitting the top of one set of traffic lights and knocking them clean off the pole. We continued to roll over a couple more times while in mid air before crashing back onto the road.

It's funny, but I can actually remember having a flash back and thinking of Susan at that very moment and of what must have happened during her fateful taxi ride. The very next second I heard a deafening and sickening thud, followed by total darkness and unconsciousness. For me, it was all over.
Chapter 5

## FULL CIRCLE

As I awoke, I could sense that my head was lying on something nice and soft, and that my ears felt like they were completely engulfed in cotton wool. I guessed that it must be a pillow of some kind. However, for some reason I could not see, but realising that something was covering my eyes.

As I attempted to scratch myself with my left hand, a wall of pain raced through my whole body, forcing me to call out softly in agony. Suddenly from nowhere, a gentle female voice asked if she could help. For a moment, I was startled, not knowing what was going on around me and trying to work out who and why she was talking to me.

Can you imagine what it must be like to suddenly be awakened from a deep sleep, not being able to see, or knowing where you are and not being able to move, because your body was racked with pain? It's even worse not to be able to remember what has happened to leave you in this state, especially when you do not know who you are. I had no memory whatsoever, of anything that happened before I awoke. There must have been a million questions that I needed answering at that moment.

Then before I had chance to ask one of them, the mystery voice told me that she was a nurse and that I was in hospital after being involved in a nasty road accident. For a time I could not speak as my brain raced ahead of me, trying to remember how and why I had ended up in the situation in which I now found myself.

Finally, I asked where I was. The voice gave me the few sketchy details that were known, all of which meant absolutely nothing to me, although she did tell me that, with constant rest and therapy, there was a good chance that I would regain my memory. It was just going to be a slow process.

My head felt like it was covered with some type of material; and as I was in a hospital, it was a good bet that it was some kind of bandage. The nurse reassured me that my eyes had been covered to protect them, after being cut by fragments of flying glass as I hit one of the windows in the car. Unfortunately, the taxi driver who had picked me up did not survive the accident, and the police had no idea where he had been taking me. She went on to tell me that they had found no wallet or any identification on me, so they had not been able to identify me and to contact my family. For the moment, or until they knew differently, I was being called John Doe by all of the hospital staff.

The nurse left me to rest, but that was the last thing on my mind. My brain was racing while trying to work out who I was, where I was, and what the hell had happened to me to make me feel so sore. However, it was all in vein, as I came up with a complete blank every time I tried to think back. It became very frustrating not being able to come up with the answers I thirsted for, made worse by the fact that I could not look around to get my bearings. If it had not been for the pain that tortured my body, and I could have raised my hand, I'm sure I would have taken the bandages from my eyes. Can you imagine what it's like to suddenly find yourself in this predicament? However, at least most of my body was still functioning correctly, or at least I thought it was. It would have been a lot scarier if I had awakened not being able to move my body below the neck.

I guess I must have fallen asleep, but I have no idea for how long. The next thing I remember was being awoken by the very same soft voice that had told me of my predicament. She informed me that I had been asleep for almost twelve hours and that it was time to get some solid food into me. A drip had been removed from my arm and she was going to spoon a little soup into my mouth, adding that I had better not try and spit it out all over her. Why would I do that? I replied, explaining that I was quite hungry. However, I would not let her start until she told me who she was. She then informed me that I could call her Nurse for the moment, as she was just one of a team who had worked very hard to get me to this point. One of those snobby ones, I thought, not really being bothered as there was nothing I could do about it, and anyway I could not put the face to a name in the condition I was in. However, there was something in her voice that seemed familiar. I just felt like I had heard it somewhere before; maybe it was just her accent. For a brief moment, something inside my head started to click, but then as fast as it had arrived, it suddenly disappeared, and I thought nothing of it.

The nurse helped me sit up in bed and she proceeded to spoon-feed me with the soup. Now I knew how young children sitting in high chairs must feel like, as I sat there with my mouth wide open, waiting for a shovel full of soup to be placed inside. The problem was that I had no idea as to which direction the spoon would be arriving from. It would be easier to do the job myself, if I could only raise my arm. Those first thoughts about a child being fed reminded me that I did have some sort of a memory, and was capable of remembering something; maybe later I would be able to expand my knowledge a little further.

While the nurse continued to feed me, she was telling me what the hospital had done to my body and that I was slowly on the mend. My left arm was still heavily bandaged and, at one time, they had thought that I might lose it; however, for the moment, it was okay. The drips and pipes had all been removed from my body, so that I could complete my recovery on my own. With plenty of rest, good food oh and constant nursing care, from here on it was going to be all up to me. I could not help myself by adding that I hope it was not going to be just soup. Suddenly, thoughts of beautiful food came flooding into my head. I can remember thinking that a few minutes earlier I could not remember what food actually was. Anyway, something must have been set in motion within my head, because as I dozed off I can remember dreaming. However, most of the people within the dream meant absolutely nothing to me at that stage.

I spent several days in that ward, lying in the same bed, so I had plenty of time to do a lot of thinking, but try as I might I still did not have a clue as to who I was. The high point of each day was when the nurse came, to talk to me and to change my dressing. I was beginning to get to know her quite well, as she was so friendly. She was always telling me things that were going on around me, which was good, but at times I did not have a clue as to what she was talking about. The evenings, when the night nurses came on, were the worst. They were all very nice but I seemed to miss the voice of the person I had spoken to when I first awoke. It just did not feel the same talking to the others, as they felt like strangers. During the day times, I would constantly be calling her, I guess for reassurance that I was actually still alive, and that this was not some sort of horrible nightmare I was experiencing. At one time, she had to tell me off, that I was wasting her precious time, that there were a lot of other sick people in the ward. That included me, I told her, trying to justify my constant bell ringing.

Maybe my feeling towards her had come about because she was with me the very first day that I awoke, and so a little seed or something had been sown within my head. Mind you, it had not entered my head that maybe she already had a guy in her life. Those things never seem to get in the way of your feelings, although later on it can come back to haunt you and kick you in the teeth.

When the big day came for my bandages to be removed from my head, I was sat up in bed and the doctor gave my favourite nurse the go ahead to slowly remove them. I could feel her gradually winding up the bandage as she unwound it from around my head. Slowly, everything was becoming lighter as I realised that it was almost removed. When she stopped, there was a brief moment when it felt like I was not going to be able to see. There was no daylight; all I had was a sense of light in front of me. However, my anxiety was soon relieved as the doctor slowly removed what must have been a gauze pad from each eye.

It was incredible. I could see quite clearly and with both eyes. Unfortunately, the first object I saw was the doctor's face, which looked very old and wrinkled and was very close to mine. I was to learn later that when animals are born they bond very closely with whatever they first lay their eyes upon. Therefore, it was a good job that it does not work with us humans. What I was looking for was the face of my favourite nurse; I needed to put a face to the voice I had fallen in love with. I could not help myself as I slowly moved my head first to the right and then to the left, taking in the sights of the hospital ward. It was a wonderful feeling to be able to see once again, and even better when my eyes suddenly stopped and focused upon the nurse standing by the doctor. I was expecting her to have a nice smile on her face, but instead she looked quite shocked, and raised her right hand index finger to her lips and gasped.

My immediate thoughts were that I was horribly disfigured, and that she had been shocked at the sight of the scars upon my face. The doctor went on to tell me all about my condition and what he was proposing to do to me. However, I was not listening to him; my eyes were still on the nurse as she picked up all of the old bandages and left my bedside. Once she was out of the room, I asked the doctor to repeat everything he had just told me, and asked if I could have a mirror to see how my face had fared during the accident.

At midday, the nurse appeared by my bedside with some food for me, and I asked if she was giving me the brush off, as I had not seen her since the bandages were removed. She told me that she had been busy, and that she had to look after the whole ward, not just me. From out of the blue, I suddenly asked her if she came from Suffolk. She stopped dead in her tracks with a startled look in her eyes. I had no idea why I had suddenly asked her that, as it meant absolutely nothing to me. There was just something from within my head that had told me to say it. She nodded her head and told me that it must be her accent that had given her away. With that, she turned and walked away, leaving me wondering why the hell I had asked her the question in the first place. However, I had been right because she had nodded her head. It started me thinking a little more, realising that Suffolk was a county of England. Maybe it was where I came from

I shouted after her to come back, which she did, and told her that my memory was coming back, adding that I'm starting to remember, I repeated it to her a couple of times, and she could feel the sense of excitement within my voice. She then moved up close to the bed, picked up my right hand, and cupped it in hers. In a quiet voice, she whispered, you still don't know who I am, do you? I shook my head and told her that I wished I did as I was feeling the adrenalin rushing through my body. She then lowered her face close to mine and quietly told me that her name was Jennifer. Sadly for me, I had no idea who Jennifer was, but at that very moment, I was hoping that I did know her. She looked so beautiful from where I was lying and I could not help thinking that I would like to court her. She kissed my hand and as she walked away, she told me that it would soon return to me who she was.

From that moment, things seemed to change, as more and more nurses all seemed to be interested in me. My bed was tucked in for me at least every thirty minutes and usually by an array of nurses, who seemed to come from every other ward within the hospital. None of them spoke to me, but most would be giggling or talking about me as they walked past my bed.

Unbeknownst to me, Jennifer had gone to the doctor and explained why she had been shocked when my bandages had been removed. She then confessed to him that she knew who I was, giving him a brief history on me. Even the doctor confessed to her that he had a couple of my records in his collection. It was agreed that she spend extra time with me, since it might help my memory return. He then set the wheels in motion for the police to contact my management team and arrange for them to come and see me.

When Jennifer returned to my bedside, she had the biggest smile on her face I had seen to date. She made her way to the right side of my bed and once again picked up my hand, quietly telling me that she had some good news and proceeded to tell me that my name was Johnny Morris, a so-called rock and roll singer. I shook my head, indicating that it meant absolutely nothing to me. However, she shocked me further with the next piece of information, when she informed me that when we were younger we were very close friends. We had grown up together in school and I had courted her for a couple of years. Only, then I was known as Jamie Spencer, which was my real name. We had parted when my musical direction had taken me away from her. Jennifer's family had then moved to London, and she had picked up the pieces of her life while training to become a nurse.

My first question to her was to ask if she was married, and I was disappointed to hear that she was. However, she continued to tell me that the marriage had not worked out, owing to her hospital work. For her, it had been all work and no play, while her husband had experienced all play and no work. They had not been compatible and slowly they had drifted apart, until the day that he never returned home from the pub. From that day, she had never heard a single word from him.

Once it was established who I was, I was wheeled in my bed to a two-person side ward, where I was introduced to my bedroom mate, a sixty-year-old guy who was always telling me about his piles and how they were give him constant pain. Not to mention the pain that I was experiencing, from his constant complaining and passing of foul wind.

That night I did not get much sleep, as slowly I started to analyse and remember portions from my past life. Jennifer had started the ball rolling and now it was gaining momentum at a fast rate of knots. I was lucky, because Jennifer would be able to verify the string of questions that I was longing to ask her. The night seemed to last an eternity as I awaited the dawn and Jennifer's arrival by my bedside. However, I felt cheated of that moment when one of the giggling nurses told me that Jennifer had changed shifts, and that she would be on in the afternoon. It was a pity that she had not been there, because she could have shielded me from the constant visits to my room by most of the nurses in the entire hospital, all in search of an autograph from me to show their friends.

Just after midday, I awoke from a light snooze to find three figures all standing by my bed. There was a redheaded guy who called himself Ginger; he introduced the girl next to him as Wanda and the third person as Norman. Somehow, I felt that I knew them; it was just a case of trying to get them in perspective and work out how. All three started talking at once, as each tried to tell me of the relationship they had within my life. It slowly started coming back to me, although at first it was only the small memories that were triggered, which should have been neatly stored within my head. To all those around the bed, I must have looked bewildered, as I was suddenly faced with the prospect of the doubling the knowledge of who I was as they all tried to fit their respective places and circumstances back within my life.

After about an hour, Norman and Ginger got up and left, leaving Wanda to sit beside me and hold my hand. You must remember that we were going out with each other she asked. I didn't, but I did like the soft touch from her very warm hands as she spoke to me. She then continued to tell me that we were going to get married. Now, I sure as hell did not remember that particular incident. However, I was all ears and just listened to what she had to say. She went on to tell me that she loved and had missed me. They had all been so worried about what had happened to me, and at one time they had given up on me, thinking that I was dead.

I did not realise it but Jennifer was watching us, as she peered through the window of my room, I guess trying to weigh up the situation while not wanting to spy on me. She came into the room and walked over to the piles victim, who was still moaning and passing wind, and tucked him up in his bed. I decided to say nothing to Wanda; why complicate things this early into the brand new life that I had just been reborn into? However, I did slowly pull my hands away from hers, making a gesture to scratch myself, not wanting Jennifer to see what was happening.

Somehow, Jennifer had sparked a new light within me and I was starting to relive those heady feelings that I'd felt towards her in the very early days. I'm not sure what signs I was displaying around the room, but I'm sure Wanda picked up on it, as did Jennifer. However, nothing was said and, as Jennifer left the room, Wanda got up and also told me that she had to go. She kissed me on the cheek and told me she would be back the very next day and, with that she also left the room. In my sense of frustration, I turned to the piles victim who was still moaning and I muttered to him that he was a pain in the arse and that it was all his fault. With that, I rolled over and tried to get some sleep, but not before I had conjured up a picture of Jennifer within my head.

I don't know who it was who released the story to the press, but when they did an army of reporters and TV news cameras besieged the hospital. Suddenly, I was headline news once again, and the country was thirsting for information on what had happened to me. After such a long time of being out of the press, it was like old times when I was at the peak of my career. At one time I suspected that it might be one of the nurses, but looking back, I'm sure that Norm had a hand in it. He was never a person to miss out on what he called a good opportunity in the publicity game. Like I've said many times before, things are not as they seem with stories in the press. You must never take them at face value. After a couple of days, my bed was surrounded by baskets of flowers and get-well cards. So at least the fans still remembered me, even if I did not remember them. Mind you, there was just the chance that it was Norm who was sending most of them.

I was experiencing extreme pain in my left forearm and hand, and I asked the doctor why. He went on to explain that I must have put my hand though one of the windows in the taxi, and it was cut very deep in the wrist area. There was a time when they thought that I might lose it, but now he was sure that it had been saved, although it was not going to be the same, and I would require a lot of therapy in order to get limited use from it. It was while he was giving me this information that I suddenly remembered somebody else having the very same problem. With that, the memories of Susan came flooding back to me. It felt so strange as I recalled everything about our relationship as if it were yesterday. It was even stranger when I realised that it was also Susan's left hand that had gone through the taxi windscreen. I'm sure that by the day's end there was not one small shred of memory about her that I could not recall. However, it was her death that I struggled with the most. How could somebody whom I had loved so much be dead?

When Jennifer returned to my room to see if I was okay, I could not help myself and asked her to tell me all about Susan. However, I had forgotten one major thing and that was that Jennifer knew absolutely nothing about Susan, as our friendship had developed long after I had walked out on her back in the early days of my musical years. Unbeknownst to me, Jennifer was also going through a time of soul searching, especially after seeing Wanda at the hospital and now as I was asking her about Susan. Not sure whom I was actually attached to and not wanting to cause trouble, she went to the top ward sister and had got herself transferred to another ward. It was a cruel thing to do, especially after I had wanted to pick up on our old relationship.

I can remember waiting most of one day for her to come into my ward. I guess I must have rung my bell a hundred times, to try and get her attention. However, every time I did, a different nurse came into the room. In the end and in desperation I asked one of the nurses responding to my call where Jennifer was. It came as one hell of a shock to learn that she had been moved, and for the moment there was nothing that I could do to see her and talk to her.

I guess, in the eyes of the doctor, I was not making progress that I had been earlier. I would lie constantly on my bed, feeling very depressed and sorry for myself at not being able to see Jennifer. However, there was nothing I could do about it. I must have looked like a dog pining for its master. All of my messages, which I had asked the other nurses to deliver to her, went unanswered.

One of the nicest surprises came in the form of Steve Johnson, my old neighbour and original member of the Convertibles, who turned up out of the blue to come and see me. This was the first time that we had set eyes on each other since I had been forced to sack him years earlier because of his erratic behaviour and heavy drug use. I must have spent the first few minutes of our meeting apologising for my actions until he stopped me, acknowledging that what I did was for the good of the band and, as it turned out for the benefit of him as well. He explained that it had taken a little time but, in the end, he had picked himself up, sorted out his life, and was at that moment enjoying it to the full. In his words, he had found God, and was now a born again Christian and contented with what he saw as his future. At the moment, he had his own little band and was very heavily into religious music. We both smiled as he told me they were known as the Band of Angels. I laughed and told him that he should get in touch with Norm if he was looking for a manager. He went on to tell me it was just weekend work and that he was not in it for the money any more. This time it was purely for love and added that he was enjoying every minute of it.

That was a great meeting, something I had never thought possible because of the way we had parted. It was worth all of the pain I was now experiencing just to see him one more time, to be able to talk as we did when we were neighbours and went to school together all those years before. Now, I'm not a religious type of person but they say that God moves in mysterious ways, and at the moment I'm not in a position to disagree with those explanations

More and more of my life was returning to me, but some of the details were slow in rearing their ugly heads, while other incidents and memories came flooding back at a fast rate of knots. Both funny and strange, but it always seemed to me that most of the bad moments in time always seem to return at a fast rate, before the good things, which usually came in dribs and drabs. It was all quite strange at times, as I tried to place it all together like a very large jig saw puzzle, which was out of order or had a few pieces missing.

It did have its positives, because at times, if I did not want to talk or remember things, I would just tell whomever it was by my bedside that I could not remember and they would not pursue it. One thing was for certain, I was not remembering as much as when Jennifer was attending my bed. For some reason, she was the trigger to most of my earlier life. In their daily visits, the doctors noticed this fact although they did nothing about it.

Since Jennifer had not seen me, it was Ginger who as usual took over her role in trying to help me. He was at my bedside at every opportunity. He even brought in a small acoustic guitar, and would at times play some of our hits so it would massage my brain into remembering. However, even he noticed that I was craving Jennifer's attention by my constant questions about her. He knew that I missed her one hell of a lot.

Ginger was also trying to get me back on the road with the band, but I could feel that it was all over. The musical bug had left me; it was time to move on to the other things in my life that awaited me just around the corner. However, I still delighted in singing with him as he strummed the guitar quietly in the background. Many times, when I looked up and saw all of the nurses peering though the ward window, I wondered if I had made the right decision.

One day, Ginger brought along JC and Benj to see me and that was nice, as we had all made some good music together in the studios over the years. Sadly, I confided in them all that I had decided to hang up the microphone, and I knew they would find other stars to record and have good times with. Just because I was calling it a day, there was no reason that their world should come to an end. Every day there was new talent being discovered and they should jump on the bandwagon. They all tried to tell me that I still had a place in the charts. I had to tell them that my audience were a lot older now, and that if I were to continue, all you would hear at my concerts would be the rattling of colostomy bags by their sides, instead of their hand clapping. I told them that if my hand did not heal correctly, I would end up being one of the original one-armed bandits. Ginger was quick and beat me to the punch line, announcing that it was a good name for a band: The One-Armed Bandit.

Wanda was also constantly dropping in on me, but somehow things did not seem the same between us, Although she was interested to know how I was getting on with the nurse, and did not believe me when I told her that she had been moved, answering by telling me that maybe it was because I had been a naughty boy with her way back. I did not take too kindly to that remark, as deep inside I was burning up because I could not see her. However, Wanda did tell me that Norm had told her all about our early relationship, and that she understood.

When the doctor next came to see me, he explained that he was not happy with my progress, because it had slowed; did I have a problem? I could not help telling him that I missed my daily visits with Jennifer, and told him how we had known each other during our school days. When he left, he told me that he would see what he could do.

The next afternoon, I was surprised to welcome Jennifer to my bedside. She was not in nurse's clothes. She had taken her day off to come and visit me after the doctor had spoken to her. Luckily, I had nobody with me at the time and so we were able to talk to each other about our problems and, lucky for us the piles victim had also been moved out by then, so we were really on our own.

As Jennifer sat on the side of the bed, I did not beat around the bush and I told her that I loved her very much. I apologised for walking out on her all those years earlier. No matter what she had heard about me, it was all in the past and I hoped that she would be part of my future. Jennifer explained that she had thought a lot of me, but that she had not been sure of herself. She had thought that it was my loss of memory that was playing tricks with me. She went on to tell me that when Wanda had walked onto the scene, she thought that she was the real love in my life, adding that later she had thought that my advances towards her when I first awoke in hospital were just natural and normal reactions from a male patient, leaving her completely mixed up to a point where she did not know what to do.

I broke in and told her that I loved her very much, and that, no matter what I remember in the future it was not going to change my feeling towards her. Hell, I had just been given a second chance in life and there was no way that I was going to stuff it up all over again. I added that there were most likely many things that I could not remembered but, as far as I was concerned, for the future I did not need my memory all I needed was her, and that together we could make our own history.

Before she could answer, the door opened and in walked Ginger, making his usual funny remarks, this time about a couple of love birds. He walked over and picked up the guitar that was by my bedside cabinet and suggested that I sing the song to Jennifer that I had told him I would if the occasion ever presented its self. As Ginger lightly strummed the strings, I gently sang to Jennifer Have I Told You Lately That I Love You. I never quite finished the song as my voice broke up, but at least Jennifer got the message, leant forward, and kissed me.

Unfortunately, that wonderful spell was broken as Wanda came in with a small bouquet of flowers for me. I'm sure she knew what was happening; that I had fallen head over heels for Jennifer once again, and accepted it fully. For a couple of seconds there was a moment of silence as nobody spoke. However, it was Wanda who broke the ice, and told me that Ginger had relayed to her that I did not want to sing anymore. She went on to tell me that she had been given instructions from her Father to deal with the situations as she thought fitting. With that, she removed from her handbag a piece of paper telling me that it was my contract with Regal Records. She then proceeded to tear it up in front of us, telling me that she hoped that I had found what I was looking for, as it had been a long and winding road for me. We all knew what she was saying and I believe that she was sincere when she wished us both, every happiness for the future. She grabbed my good hand and thanked me for the good times and, with that, she turned and walked out of my life.

Ginger again picked up the guitar and I attempted to sing "Missing You" especially for Jennifer; after all, I had written it especially for her, at a time when I was deeply in love. It was about a situation I had found myself in, and this time I just hoped that I would not stuff it all up as I had done with the first opportunity. I was lucky because I was being given a second chance in life and this time I was not going to let it go.

Norm popped in after he had heard about what had happened with the Regal contract, and told me that there were no hard feelings. After all, we had come long way together. We had some good times and had all made a little money out of the venture, even if it had all come a little late in my career, but I held no grudge. That day we shook hands for the last time, just like we had all those years earlier on my future. As he left the ward, he could not help himself, as he thought about making a little more money and told me that if and when I was to organise a reunion I should get in touch with him. With that, he smiled at me and also walked out of my life. Ginger could see that Jennifer and I had things to talk about and told me that he had some recordings to do. With that, he handed me my old photograph album, which he'd kept secretly from me until the right moment arrived. He went on to tell me that he'd found it amongst a load of gear he'd stumbled upon while tiding up my belongings, and that he hoped it would answer a few questions for me. Then bidding us farewell, he disappeared from my bedside.

Jennifer was first to speak and told me that she loved me; it was as if my prayers had been answered. As we once again kissed, I whispered in her ear, asking if she would marry me and without hesitation she agreed. It was something we should have done many years ago, but then I would not have experienced life as had been intended.

It had all been a long and enjoyable dream, and all of its twists and turns had been well worth the wait. I would not have changed anything that was thrown at me. Life's too short and should be lived and enjoyed to the full. I had grabbed the bull by the horns and rode it the full 10 second distance. The nightmares I had become involved in along the way were just hurdles that I had to negotiate myself over or around. Occasionally leading me off my chosen path, but in the end I had managed to get back on to the right track to happiness, finding a love that I had been destined to find one day. I believe that our lives are all mapped out for us at birth, and no matter what we think, whatever we do, and however we end up; it was all meant to be. It was all meant for a reason, even if we do not know why, because in the end it will never hurt us.

With that, I walked away from Johnny Morris and the Convertibles, to resume the identity that my Mother had lovingly bestowed on me. It was also my hope that I would be able to walk away from the bad incidents that had plagued my life, hoping that I had seen the last of them, as Jennifer and I hoped that life from now on would be good to us both.

Best Wishes Jamie Spencer
FURTHER INFORMATION

'Almost Total Recall' an Autobiography of the author Terry Aspinall. This book is part one that covers his early years from May 1943 until he leaves New Zealand to head for Australia in March 1988. Volume 2 is under way but will be couple of years down the track.

'The Autumn Reunion' a fictitious story of a school reunion that tempted James through the painful journey of having to chose one girlfriend above another.

'The Fabulous Spawlszoff Brothers' a fictitious story, that is based on actual funny events that the author has experienced during his 50 years in the music industry.

'Johnny Morris and the Convertibles' is a fictitious story that is based on actual events that the author has experienced during his 50 years in the music industry.

'The British Hang Gliding History' is an updated history of how the hang glider was invented in Australia during 1963, and of how it arrived in the UK to be manufactured and flown for the first time during 1972. This book is a shortened version of the successful website it is based on at www.british-hang-gliding-history.com there are working hyperlinks to the websites BHGA early Hang Gliding magazine 'Wings' and also the BMAA early Microlighting magazine 'Front Line'.

'The Adventures of Henri and Charlie' is a very young children's short story about the authors pet Peach Face Parrot and Canary that escape from their cages and are taken on a wild ride, with no hope of returning to the security of their own cages back home. In this story the birds talk to each other.
