I Talk Too Much

by Francis Rossi

  I also learned how to communicate with audiences, whether they were friendly or hostile, and at Butlin’s they could sometimes be both at the same time. We were booked to play at this venue on the camp called the Pig & Whistle, which was exactly as it sounds – a pub. Albeit a bloody big one. You could get twelve hundred in there easy, but they would all be seated at tables and chairs. There was a little space on the floor down the front of the stage where people could dance. But mainly they sat at their tables and drank – and drank and drank. That is, when they bothered to turn up.

  There was another venue on site called the Rock and Roll Ballroom, and we couldn’t understand why they didn’t put us on there. In the end, they did get us to play at the Rock and Roll Ballroom, and we thought that was a decent break until we had our first performance and realised that no one bothered going there towards the end of the night. They were all at the Pig & Whistle getting plastered. For some of our sets we would play to about twenty people. Then there would be a huge rush of people coming in for the last half an hour, when the Pig & Whistle had closed.

  We did start to build up the crowd in the ballroom eventually, though. We also soon learned not to overreach with the music. We’d arrived with the notion that we were this exciting new band, very hip with our own ideas, playing some original material mixed in with covers. But we wouldn’t play anything too obvious or that was currently in the charts. Boy, did that change quickly! The first few shows we came out and treated the crowds to a very cool selection of hits from the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, some early Elvis, plus a couple of our efforts – and died a death. People either started calling out for requests or simply wandered off.

  The clue to what we needed to do to keep the punters happy came each night when Roy took the lead vocal on this really drippy version we did of ‘I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’, which he sang like a pub singer doing Elvis. It went down an absolute storm, people standing and cheering at the end. That was when we learned another important lesson: ultimately, it didn’t matter what songs we liked particularly, it only mattered which songs the audience liked best. This was a rule that would apply, we discovered, even after we’d started making records and having hits. You could follow whatever ‘artistic vision’ you had on the albums, but God forbid if you didn’t play the hit songs live.

  Never does that rule apply more than when you are playing live before a paying audience. They are in charge, not you. We learned the bare bones of that fact at Butlin’s, and we never forgot it. You could see how all the other acts there adapted what they did to keep the crowds happy. One band, the Olympic Five, would grind through their set until they came to this one number they did called ‘The Hucklebuck’, this Chubby Checker tune that had been the follow-up to his most famous hit, ‘The Twist’, but had never been released in Britain. This band had got hold of the song and really went to town. The drunker the crowd got, the more they absolutely loved it. As soon as the band went into ‘The Hucklebuck’ the whole place went mad!

  We would see this and think, all right, we get it. We knew what we had to do. We just didn’t have the right songs yet. What we did have though, after our experience at Butlin’s, was a much more dynamic live band and a much greater professionalism. We also had – although we didn’t know it yet – a new member of the band. His name was Ricky Harrison and the first time I saw him I was convinced he was gay – although that wasn’t the word we would have used back then. He was all blond hair and tight trousers and a big toothy grin. Over-friendly. Which made me suspicious, because I wasn’t used to other blokes being so nice. I was used to geezers and hard men. This Ricky Harrison, he wasn’t like that at all.

  Turned out he was in another of the acts at Butlin’s that year – this little cabaret trio called the Highlights, which was Ricky and two girls, twins, called Jean and Gloria Harrison. The girls were dark-haired and Ricky was blond, that was their image. They would start their show with ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On’ and a couple more crowd-pleasers, then the girls would disappear for a costume change and Ricky would sing ‘Baby Face’. Cheesy as hell but the crowds loved it.

  They were on at the Gaiety Theatre, which was much more grans and kiddies than the room we were in. The idea was Ricky was the girls’ brother – which we believed until he explained that it was all part of the act. That his real name was Richard Parfitt, but that he’d never liked the Parfitt name anyhow, and was happier as Harrison. It was the girls that had named him Ricky. And, needless to say, far from being their brother he had managed to have affairs of some sort with both of them at different times. This sort of complicated behaviour was, we were soon to discover, very much the way things would carry on for Rick, as I came to know him, for the rest of his life.

  Rick had come up and introduced himself to us while we were playing one afternoon. It became obvious pretty quickly that he saw what we did – being in a pop group – as more along the lines of what he wanted to do than singing with the girls. He was a big Cliff Richard fan and he definitely fancied himself in that early Cliff mould as naughty-but-nice rock ’n’ roll singer. I liked him straight away, even though I assumed he was a ‘poof’, which was the word we used back then. I admired him for being so camp. When he told me he wasn’t a poof I almost didn’t believe him.

  Rick very quickly became friends with me and Alan. With Roy being that much older and John being a dark horse, as they say, having a new pal my own age to run around with was great fun. Rick had been born seven months before me, making him a Libra – one of the signs that a Gemini like me is meant to get along with. He came from Woking, Surrey, which is effectively deep into the south-west of London – close enough to where Alan and I came from to make him one of us – almost.

  Rick was just really nice, easy going and great fun to have around. Unlike me, he didn’t seem torn up inside with anxiety and being self-conscious. Things just seemed to come more easily to him. Or that’s how it seemed anyway. Rick was an only child and like most only children he’d grown up showered in love and affection. Not spoilt so much as simply feeling he was unbeatable. Always looking on the bright side. Never say die – ‘What me, worry?’ One of those guys that walks around with a kind of glow, the kind you want to like you. It was partly this and partly because he was so unlike me, more how I wished I could be, that we became such good friends so quickly. It was only much later I discovered how much Rick actually wanted to be more like me, but we’ll come to that.

  Rick really proved himself to me when I got thrown out of the digs we were staying in at Butlin’s, after I was caught sleeping with a girl there. The girl I would marry soon after, in fact. She was named Jean Smith and she was working at Butlin’s with her sister, Pat, and I know it sounds corny but the first time I laid eyes on her I told myself: ‘I’m gonna marry her.’ I just knew.

  I’ll never forget the morning I got kicked out of my digs because that was the day Jean and I first had sex. She was a virgin – which all ‘good’ girls were before marriage in those days – ha, bloody, ha – and I had actually had trouble trying to get my willy into her. We tried for two or three nights running before I finally managed to do the deed. It was more relief than anything – for both of us – when we managed at last. I doubt either of us really enjoyed it. We were both just getting going again one morning soon after when the landlady – this feisty Scotswoman – came in and virtually dragged me off Jean.

  First she threw Jean out – ‘Ya wee tart!’ – and then me. I was looking at sleeping on the beach on my own until Rick came to my rescue – by letting Jean have his room, and offering to kip out on the beach with me. We spent the next few nights sleeping under some old deckchairs we made into a kind of makeshift hut. Other nights we curled up in phone boxes or in the stalls of the public toilets.

  That was when we first became close. My friendship with Alan was very up and down by this point. We were always falling out. Rick would be very perturbed when he saw us having a fight. One day, we’d just come offstag
e and the two of us just lit into one another. I’ve always hated violence. I’d start crying afterwards. But I think Rick was more upset by it than Alan or me. The next thing, Alan got off with one of the twins. I can’t remember exactly which one he slept with. They were so alike. But I know Rick was beside himself. He was madly in love with Jean (from his group, not my Jean) – and even though I think it was probably Gloria that Alan got off with, the whole thing did Rick’s head in. That said, Rick and Alan got on really well. Again, they were the same age, had similar interests, Alan with his flash suits, Rick with his tight trousers.

  When the season came to a close and we all prepared to return home, back to our separate lives, you could tell how sad Rick was. He’d already become part of our gang. It wasn’t until later though that he told me he wanted to become part of the group. I just assumed he’d go on to become the next Des O’Connor or something. But we did manage to stay in touch, mainly through Alan. Rick would pop up from time to time, staying the night over at Alan’s parents’ place. Now and again he would turn up at one of our shows.

  It was around this time we finally got to make a record. Pat Barlow had somehow managed to wangle us a deal with Piccadilly Records, a subsidiary of Pye, whose best-known act was Joe Brown and the Bruvvers.

  We had recorded a few numbers – just playing them live in a small studio in Soho we rented for the afternoon – and Pat had posted out copies of the tape to various record labels and publishing companies. Absolutely no response until a chap named Ronnie Scott – the head of a songwriting publishing company called Valley Music and not to be confused with the famous British jazz player who later opened his own eponymous club in Soho – phoned Pat out of the blue to say he’d heard the demo, thought it showed ‘promise’ and would we like to come in and discuss a deal. The result was an invitation to go in and record with the in-house producer at Pye, John Schroeder.

  John was an old head on young shoulders. He was only twenty-six when he won an Ivor Novello Award for co-writing ‘Walkin’ Back to Happiness’, a number for Helen Shapiro. He had the John Schroeder Orchestra, which had some easy-listening hits and did things like the theme tunes to TV shows like The Fugitive. He was a lovely man, always very encouraging. He would tell Pat: ‘The Spectres are that much away from greatness!’ And snap his fingers. We loved him.

  However, our first single with John was a cover of ‘I (Who Have Nothing)’ – no laughing at the back there! – which had been a big hit in 1963 for Shirley Bassey. Apart from the fact it was based on an Italian song called ‘Uno Dei Tanti’, I had absolutely no affinity for the song whatsoever. But the people at Piccadilly thought it was a great idea and who were we to argue with a proven hit-maker like John? Also, Alan really liked the song. In fact he actually suggested it, I seem to recall. So like the good boys we were, we did it. You can listen to it today on YouTube but I would consider it a personal favour if you didn’t. In the end, everyone from Joe Cocker and Petula Clark to Liza Minnelli, Katherine Jenkins and Donny Osmond did covers of that song and I can assure you our version is still the worst. Let us never speak of it again.

  Rick, though, thought this was the most amazing thing that had ever happened. He started trembling when he first held the record in his hands. By then the Highlights had split up and we all knew he was looking for something new. He was working as the driver of a bread van and I really sympathised, knowing how close I had been to driving an ice-cream van. In fact, we all did various part-time jobs to help bring some money in. Alan did a bit of window cleaning sometimes and I worked for a while for the London County Council as a gardener and for a time at the local opticians’ shop.

  Then Pat Barlow came up with another of his brainstorms. Why didn’t we get Rick in the group with us? Some bright spark at Piccadilly had put the idea in Pat’s head: that we needed another voice in the group and another guitarist. In fact, he was looking to replace me as the frontman, though that only became clear to me a little later. He was after someone with a better voice. A ‘proper’ singer. As usual back then, we just went along with it. Plus, Rick was a real friend by then. If it had meant auditioning strangers we probably wouldn’t have gone for it. But it was Rick – and he was blond and had those tight trousers. And he could sing. The others also thought it was a good idea. Even Alan, which really surprised me, because he would question every decision, big or small. Later I realised that Pat had rather shrewdly spoken to Alan about it first before mentioning it to the rest of us.

  So we told Pat to phone him up and ask him. I think Rick said yes before Pat had even finished getting the question out his mouth. The very next day Rick turned up at the place where we now rehearsed, in this basement in Lambeth Walk below Pat’s gas showroom. He set up, plugged in his guitar – and out came this horrendous noise. We hadn’t realised until that moment that Rick wasn’t particularly good on the guitar. That we’d only ever really seen him play ‘Baby Face’.

  After he left, the others wanted to get rid of him. But I insisted he stayed. I could see he had something, and of course he could sing, and I thought, well, he could only get better on guitar. The others grumblingly went along with it. Though we did secretly keep his guitar unplugged from the amp for his first gig with us. It was the only time we had to do that though. Rick really saw joining the group as his big opportunity. He was determined to learn fast.

  And that’s exactly what he did.

  Chapter Three

  Matchstick Men

  Having Rick Parfitt – as he was now properly known – in the group didn’t quite work out the way Pat Barlow and the others had imagined. I think they thought they were getting a new frontman who could sing and play guitar. Instead, Rick and I developed almost immediately into the kind of two-man harmony line-up I had always envisaged back in the days when I wanted my brother to join me in an Everly Brothers-style group. By the time Rick joined, the Beatles were the biggest thing going and they had a similar set-up with John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It was the same with Mike Pender and Tony Jackson in the Searchers and lots of other groups of the era like the Merseybeats.

  There was also another aspect to Rick joining that really made the group better, at least from my point of view. That was, I liked him! Roy was too old for me to really relate to on a one-to-one level. John was too quiet – until suddenly he wasn’t and he erupted. And Alan was too domineering for me to relax around.

  Rick was the same age as me, and very easy going. He was just nice. A gentle soul really, with a great sense of humour. He could also be very sensitive. That was definitely something I hadn’t experienced from the rest of the group. As a teenager, if I got fed up or pissed off I would often cry. Alan would be apoplectic. ‘Stop crying! You’re embarrassing me!’ But Rick would actually come up and give me a hug and try and comfort me. He was always a hugger.

  The very first gig he did with us I lent him some of my clothes because he didn’t have any trendy stage gear of his own – or so he kept saying. He actually had some nice gear but he wanted to make sure whatever he wore fitted in with the rest of us. We really were like brothers. On the early tours, we would sometimes share a bed. Not in a Bowie or Elton sort of way, I should add. More like Morecambe and Wise in those sketches where they would lie in bed together bickering and making fun of each other. Young men often did share beds in those days. Or if it was twin beds we would push them together. This was fine until one of us would pull a bird. On many occasions, Rick would be in one bed with some girl and I would be in the bed next to them, having to listen to what was going on. He had a row with one girl and she got up and said, ‘I need a piss,’ and went to the toilet. I remember thinking: classy. Then when she came back she said, ‘I feel like knifing someone.’ I didn’t sleep another wink that night. Neither did Rick.

  Because everyone always just assumed Rick was gay in those days – he and I would ham it up on occasion, holding hands in public. That would send Alan and John – the macho guys – completely insane. Especially Alan, who I think, g
enuinely, had his doubts about us. To put it in context and help understand such prejudices, it’s only fair to point out that homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967. Being openly ‘queer’ could get you in all sorts of trouble, starting with the law – and ending, if you weren’t careful, with Alan yelling at you.

  The live music scene had changed while we’d been away all summer and the sort of beat-group, sub freak-out stuff we’d been doing in the Spectres was out of date. We had also released a second single – ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’. No, not the superb Donovan hit from a year later but a little ditty that Alan had come up with. It was very bouncy and poppy and a complete flop. There was a third single, called ‘(We Ain’t Got) Nothing Yet’, a cover of a song that had been a hit in America earlier that year for the Blues Magoos. I thought we might stand a chance with that one as we pretty much copied the original note for note and it was very catchy. But no, that died a death too.

  It was the beginning of the mod era and new London outfits like the Small Faces, the Kinks and the Who. Suddenly Pat was finding it nearly impossible to book the Spectres, so we changed our name to The Traffic – until it was announced a few months later that Steve Winwood of the Spencer Davis Group had left to form a new band – called Traffic. It didn’t seem fair that he could do that as we’d been there first, as it were. But he was Steve Winwood, who’d had number 1 records with ‘Keep On Running’ and ‘Gimme Some Lovin”, and I was still mowing lawns. So we changed our name to Traffic Jam – take that, gobshite! We also ditched the straight suits and skinny ties and ‘experimented’ with open-necked shirts with patterns on them. Crazy, man!