by Judith Wills
The highlight of my October was meeting another of the bands who had helped me through my early teenage years – The Everly Brothers, who were about to make a comeback with RCA after several years in the wilderness overshadowed by the new wave rock bands. They had a press reception in town and I had a few words with both of them, particularly my old favourite, Phil. But it wasn’t my first meeting with them – not that I was going to remind them of the first.
It’s 1965. I’m 16 at last. I’m sitting at the tiny fold-down table in the caravan at Botley where I live with my mother and the cat. We moved here a few months ago when Mum and Dad split up for the second time; he went to live in a bedsit in Cowley and we came here to this small fixed van estate; it was all we could afford. I’m studying for my A levels at Oxford Technical College. I’m supposed to be working on economic history but in fact have more than half an ear on the radio … the pirate station Radio London, the Dave Cash show.
I hear he’s announcing a competition. ‘… I’m going to play the start of an old hit and if you can guess the song and send your answer in on a postcard, you could win two tickets to a fab pop show in London …’. So I’m all ears. Within one second I identify the song as ‘Crying in the Rain’, the famous Everly Brothers song from 1961. ‘I’ll never let you see, just how my broken heart is hearting me …’
So it’s away with the books, out with a postcard, con Mum for a stamp and off it’s posted. And I win. A couple of weeks later I’m heading to London with my friend Cookie. We get there on the coach then somehow I negotiate us to East Ham tube station and to the Granada Theatre. And then we’re allowed on stage to meet The Everly Brothers, and an hour or two later at last I’m sitting there watching my heroes from way back, perform all their hits. Including ‘Cathy’s Clown’ and ‘Crying in the Rain’. It’s magic. Magic. How lucky I am. I just don’t want to go home. I want to stay here forever and listen to pop music.
Press reception and new recording contract or not, I was disturbed by how anxious The Everlys seemed, twitchy and strained. I came away with the impression they really didn’t want to be doing this.
A year or two later I was to find out that by the time of that reception, Don and Phil were both having personal problems and arguing all the time. In the summer of 1973 Phil smashed his guitar to pieces on stage, walked out, and they didn’t perform together again for many years. But no other duo in pop has ever touched them for the true pop quality of their songs and their fabulous voices and pretty faces.
On 19 November I met for the first time two bands who were to become perhaps the biggest UK pop bands of the ’70s – in the morning, the Bay City Rollers, a band from Edinburgh who had been struggling to get a foot on the pop ladder for a couple of years and were being pushed hard by manager Tam Paton.
While I found the boys – brothers Alan and Derek Longmuir, Woody, Les and Eric – nice enough lads, their single ‘Keep on Dancing’ was barely average and it was, in my mind, similar to how I felt about The Osmonds – they just weren’t going to get anywhere, no matter how loud their managers shouted that they were.
Well, I was right, for a while at least. ‘Keep on Dancing’ spent seven weeks slowly creeping up the charts to finally reach a high of number 9, from whence it slowly disappeared as did the Bay City Rollers, more or less, for another three years or more. At which point they became, more or less, as big as The Beatles for a while. And I was proved wrong again.
Later that day I headed to John Halsall’s office to meet a new (well, new in terms of the charts) band from Wolverhampton, Slade. John Halsall had, for a time, dated Julie Webb, we all knew each other very well and he was building up a good business for himself in promotion and PR. Slade, under the guidance of Chas Chandler (who was one of the most respected names in the music business, having made stars in the UK both of The Animals and Jimi Hendrix) had at last come out of the wilderness of several years of touring the provinces as a quasi-skinhead band. They’d grown their hair, and were now at number 1 in the charts with ‘Coz I Luv You’.
Noddy, Jim, Dave and Don were four great guys whom I immediately liked as they were quick-witted, warm people who didn’t take themselves too seriously and were completely down to earth. That song stayed in the top 10 for seven weeks and was the start of a huge career for them. Even I could see the potential in this batty band. They seemed to be saying: Look … the ’60s are history. This is the ’70s. This is our time. And don’t you forget it …
Slade soon became good mates and I usually saw them up at the BBC TV Centre in Wood Lane, where they always seemed to be doing Top of the Pops. This was one of my favourite places to go. To arrive at TV Centre in a taxi, be let in through the barrier by the gateman, then to be allowed into the inner sanctum of the building by the receptionist, to be escorted up to the Top of the Pops studio or the dressing rooms – well it literally was another of my dreams come true.
I seemed to have the run of the place, eventually. Slade liked to eat in the BBC canteen so we’d spend the odd half hour talking over egg and chips or a cheese sandwich and tea. Then I’d go into the studio with them (or whoever I had come to interview) and become one of the dancers. Mum would sit at home in Buckingham and watch the screen every Thursday looking out for me and would ring the next day if she had spotted me. In later years the programme was pre-recorded, but in the early days it was always live.
A few years ago, there was a retrospective on TV about the Top of the Pops heyday, and I happened to switch it on. There was Julie Webb, being interviewed about those days, and then there was a clip of, if I remember, Edison Lighthouse, and there was this girl in a greeny-patterned mini dress, dancing in quite a lithe, watchable sort of way, with long, long hair – and then I realised it was me.
The young enthusiasm, the sheer abandon, the youthful suppleness of the body, the way I was, it made me feel wistful. Sad. And rather old. Which of course I am now.
After the show, we would usually go up to the BBC bar where there were always familiar faces. The girls from Pan’s People, whom I also interviewed in their dressing rooms several times in 1971 and 1972, would arrive and we’d stand by the bar chatting. Within minutes, a large crowd of male BBC employees would all decide that they needed a drink, so that they could come and have a closer inspection of the lovely Ruth, Dee Dee, Babs and co. I was prepared to hate Babs, because she was the sexiest, blondest, poutiest one – but she turned out to be quite shy and also very likeable. Why she ended up with that Robert Powell, who once played Jesus Christ in a TV mini-series, and who was one of the most pompous actors I ever did interview, I’ll never know.
There was a large TV screen to one side of the BBC bar and in mid-November I sat there and watched the Miss World competition with Pan’s People. It was the year that some of the first gay protesters – led by Peter Tatchell – held an alternative pageant outside the Albert Hall, with drag queen contestants called names like Miss Used and Miss Treated. This later made the BBC news, which we also watched on the same TV before heading home. Protests like these – and the previous year when eggs had been thrown at Bob Hope during the contest by women’s libbers – were the first rumblings that Miss World’s days were numbered, but I always loved its naffness, and its glitz and ridiculousness. Just like the annual Eurovision song contest, it had always been around and you couldn’t imagine a time without it.
So when, a week or two later, I received a phone call from Mecca, the entertainment company with Eric and Julia Morley at the helm, which ran the Miss World, I was intrigued.
They wanted me to be one of the four judges at the Mecca/Coca Cola Freestyle disco dancing championships at the Empire Ballroom, Leicester Square early in December. What my qualifications for this were, I am not too sure – as nobody at Mecca had ever seen me dancing, or checked out my credentials in the field of dance, or indeed, as a judge of anything at all.
But they did want me, and of course I accepted. And it was a fabulous ’70s evening from start to finish – pure disc
o, pure over the top. The Jackson Five, The Sweet, Shocking Blue (remember ‘Venus’?), T.Rex, Spirit in the Sky – these were the people, this was the music the sixteen or so young, crazily dressed couples were dancing to.
Julia Morley sent a limo for me and was there to meet me in the foyer. The other judges were Douggie Squires (choreographer of the New Generation TV dance troupe), Peter Denyer of Please Sir!, and Jack Wild, the actor from the huge hit movie Oliver! who was a great guy and whom I had met before. Mrs Morley was a quite formidable woman both to look at – very tall, with very dark hair piled up on her head, the highest heels – and in manner. She read us the riot act – I mean rules – and for a moment Jack and I felt like naughty schoolchildren but I thought it was great because I’d seen her behaving in exactly the same manner regularly like clockwork each year on my TV and now here she was, doing it to me! What fabulous, fabulous fun!
Jack and I had plenty to drink backstage in the green room and when the competition began were slightly horrified to find that we were expected to walk around among the disco dancers on the floor, marking them as we went. No Strictly Come Dancing row of comfy chairs and a desk for us, then.
I was having quite a job standing upright, let alone walking among the contestants, and was at one point nearly knocked flying by a particularly exuberant couple whom, of course, I immediately gave nil points to on my scorecard. There is nothing better for the ego of a 22-year-old than to sit in judgement on her peers in front of a cheering audience. ‘Oh, I don’t like that one’s trousers, I’ll knock them out … oh, just look at the hairdo on her, she’s got to go …’.
Nowadays I watch TV talent contests and know just how those judges feel, how smug and untouchable they are. The contestants’ lives in your hands – what a great feeling for an egomaniac. I have no idea whether the best couple won – I very much doubt it, we judges were all so busy trying to stand upright, being knocked over, and clocking the clothes that I think it very likely the best couple went out, first round. Never mind, I expect they got over it.
seven
To Reach the
Unreachable Star
1972
Doctor Who … Steptoe and Son … the New Seekers at Eurovision … The Generation Game … Doomwatch … Crossroads … The Godfather … Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex … Columbo … loon pants … Cosmopolitan magazine … Gilbert O’ Sullivan and ‘Claire’ … ’Puppy Love’ … it’s got to be 1972.
I don’t know if I really wanted to die, I just wanted things to change, that’s why I took the overdose of aspirin last week. That’s why I ended up in hospital in Oxford, having my stomach pumped, and feeling like an idiot when I came round.
All I wanted was to go back to Witney Grammar School and my friends, and not have to go to this horrid Bicester Grammar School any more. I hate it and everybody hates me, everybody’s already got their friends and I’m so miserable and lonely I could cry … and often do. Bicester bloody Grammar School. Everyone is ignoring me or bullying me or laughing at me but Mum says I’ve got to go back anyway on Monday because there’s nowhere else to go. So I’ve got to suffer for another two years and taking the aspirins was a complete waste of time, and I feel peculiar and weak as well.
Anyway, at least it’s still only Friday. It’s good to sit here with Dad in front of the TV. The coal fire’s bright in the grate, the curtains are drawn, the world is shut out and it’s just me, him and Andy Williams.
I love The Andy Williams Show. It means the weekend is ahead which is one good reason to love it, but I’d love it anyway. When the parents decided to get back together again for a trial run last year – 1963 – they found this old house in Weston-on-the-Green and the TV’s become my new best friend.
Mum’s gone to visit her friend Mrs Hill, like she usually does at the weekends. That’s ok. Dad can cook, and we both like to sit here and relax. The weekend starts with the fab new show Ready Steady Go! on a Friday teatime. Keith Fordyce, well he’s a bit old-fashioned, but that Cathy McGowan is good and they often have The Beatles or Billy J. Kramer on. The Andy Williams Show is usually on just before bed.
On Saturday, after Dad comes back from the pub and the betting shop, it will be wrestling with Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy, compèred by Kent Walton in the afternoon, and then Juke Box Jury with David Jacobs, another of my favourites (the show, not him, I think he looks supercilious) and Thank Your Lucky Stars, with Brian Matthew or Pete Murray. Sometimes they’ll have Billy Fury on which makes it even more special. Sundays – they’re no use. Sing Something Simple – ghastly. Nothing to watch on TV, except perhaps Sunday Night at the London Palladium, just homework and dreading going back to that place tomorrow.
Dad’s mother, Grannie Carlisle, died just a few months ago and so he got some money from the sale of her things, and before that he sold off our house in Banbury, what was left after the mortgage, and now he’s selling bits and pieces of the furniture and nick nacks in this house, so he hasn’t run up any debt again. But he’s been made redundant from his job as a telephone sales rep so things aren’t looking good. Dad’s promised Mum that he doesn’t gamble but if he doesn’t, why does he go to the betting shop? But these weekends, we kind of ignore all that and we get on fine, my Dad and I.
Andy Williams – he is so restful, so relaxing. He smiles and I almost believe everything can be ok. He’s got such a gorgeous voice – and although he’s probably at least 30 or even older, and I’m only 14, I think I quite fancy him though I wouldn’t want to admit that to anyone. I wonder what he looks like in real life? I wonder what colour his hair is? And then he has those cute little Osmond Brothers on; they are so sweet but you wouldn’t want to admit that to anyone either. I wonder what they’ll do when they grow up?
I can remember the day now, in June 1965 after finishing my O levels, running away from that hated school down the driveway, chucking my hated brown beret in the ditch on the way home. Even now, if I ever catch sight of schoolchildren wearing brown uniform, I shiver and have to look away.
In summer 1972 I was to find out, close up, what colour Andy Williams’ hair was in real life, and in the same year, I was to find out what the Osmonds were doing now they were growing up.
I also met and interviewed, in no particular order, Slade (four times), Cilla Black, Rick Nelson, Gene Pitney (twice), Jack Jones, Neil Diamond, Johnny Nash, Glen Campbell (aiming on that day for the title of World’s Dumbest Celebrity), Anne Murray, The Sweet, The Drifters, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jonathan King, The Temptations, Mama Cass, Sacha Distel, José Feliciano, Neil Sedaka, Rick Wakeman, Michael Jackson, Peter Skellern, Tony Christie and many others.
Gene Pitney was another of the stars who could have counted me as a true fan, a few years earlier. I went to the New Theatre, Oxford, to see him perform with my friend Cookie, and collected all his records. How well I remember my brother Rob saying ‘How on earth can you go and see him – he’s dreadful! He sounds like a wailing tom cat!’
When I met him – at the Westbury Hotel in the West End, on 28 February 1972, I was delighted to find that he seemed a genuinely friendly and funny person. However, of course during interviews it wasn’t always easy to tell what someone was really like. A year or two later I met and interviewed another huge pop star more than once, who came from my early hometown of Banbury. I thought he was the most lovely man you could meet, and said so in print. I also admired him for his charitable work for children’s charities. Only trouble was, his name was Gary Glitter.
Another huge celeb who always seemed ok to me – if a bit weird – was Jimmy Savile, which all goes to show what a bad judge of character I was, as well as being such a bad judge of who was going to be a big star and who wasn’t.
That said, I do think Pitney was a great guy and all through the years I haven’t heard any dodgy stories about him at all.
Another early hero of mine, based purely on the fact that he had (from what I could tell of the photos printed of him in Roxy magazine and Marilyn magazine) beautiful blue eye
s and fantastic curly Elvis-like lips, and sang cutely on a single called ‘Hello Mary Lou’ (coincidentally, written by Gene Pitney) was Ricky Nelson. Sadly when I finally got to meet him in February during his career-revival attempt through country music and a single called ‘Garden Party’, he seemed somewhat lacking in the brains and charisma departments and then later, when I dragged The Boss along to the Albert Hall to see him in concert (yes, by this time we were getting rather lovely-dovey again) that February, he was dire. So dire, we left early, with my full consent. And that was the end of my love affair with the Nelson, who was killed in a plane crash in 1985.
Have I mentioned Tony Blackburn yet in this book? No – I thought not. I don’t know why, as Tony was always popping up in our lives. By 1972 he was perhaps the top Radio 1 DJ, with masses of confidence on air and a cheery chappie radio persona which neatly summed up everything about the bubblegum days of the early ’70s and my kind of ridiculous pop. In real life, although he could be like that, he seemed to be awash with self-doubt and lack of self-belief.
For a while, he had a crush on Julie Webb. We didn’t see that much of each other by now because she was working at NME. But one day we both arrived at a lunchtime press performance by The Carpenters at the old Talk of the Town off Leicester Square. Karen and Richard Carpenter were selling shedloads of albums and the place was packed out. As a dinner-dance/theatre venue, it was cabaret-style seating at long tables, and sitting next to me and opposite Julie, was Tony.
Blackburn was upset at his lack of success with the ladies, and wanted to talk about it. He’d just met a girl called Tessa but didn’t know whether she liked him or not and wanted minute detail from me on how he should behave to gain best advantage. As the gig went on, Tony talked and talked and talked, and at the end of it I felt wrung out but quite flattered that he’d chosen to tell his troubles to me.