Wow. Photos to sign. Who would want my autograph? And could I ever get through a couple of hundred? That seemed impossible. But it also sounded like fun.
“Okay, I’m good with that,” I said.
“Don’t be surprised if they have posters up that say ‘direct from BBC Radio One’ or things like that. Go along with it. They just want to make you and the club seem as big as possible,” he grinned at me, “You’ll be the talk of the town.”
I asked Tor how much the pay was and he said I would start at between 100 and 150 pounds a week. That was amazing! My father was the deputy headmaster at his school and made barely 100 pounds a week. Here I was making more than that and being paid to travel Europe and party every night. It was a young man’s dream come true!
So when did Tor think he could get me my first gig? Tor picked up his phone and dialed.
He spoke rapidly in Norwegian for a few minutes then hung up.
“You start at the beginning of November in Tonsberg. It’s an hour south of here. That’s two weeks from Friday. Does that give you enough time to get your records sent over from England?”
NORWEGIAN WOOD
It didn’t take me long to work out why Tor had chosen Tonsberg for my first gig. Bonanza was a shit hole. It attracted customers who were uninterested in the music and only wandered in off of the street to find a warm place to hang out, hide their drinking and smoking habits from concerned spouses and shake off the boredom of their repetitive nine-to-five jobs.
The Bonanza crowd were the kind of people you would be more likely to expect to run into at a twelve-step program than as part of a party group out to have fun at a nightclub. And “dress to impress” was hardly a requisite. As long as your fly was partially zipped and you had some kind of shirt on then you were good for a night on the town.
When their alcohol levels rose high enough and they decided to stumble from the bar to attempt dancing it was to Neil Diamond or Tom Jones. “Sweet Caroline” and “Delilah” became my go-to songs. Put on either of those records and the floor would fill with drunken Norwegians who would stand there, link arms and bellow out the chorus at the top of their voices like a soccer crowd in their home stadium.
Tor had said I would be a star in the town. Instead I felt like an interruption not the attraction. I think the busboy received more acclaim than I did as he was called out onto the tiny dance floor again and again throughout the night to mop up the pools of beer spilled by those sloppy drunks. In those first few days I wasn’t so much playing records as pulling teeth. It was as if I’d become a dentist not a DJ. But it taught me so much about DJing that stayed with me forever. I learned how to get through a night where I was looked at as simply a human jukebox. I got used to handling drunks with their rude, demanding requests, “Play that song again right now!” or “Play something I can dance to” and I discovered how to win people over who had zero interest in what I was doing.
After the music stopped, the lights came on and the remaining intoxicated patrons staggered out onto the streets I would clean up the booth area of shot glasses and overturned beer mugs and head upstairs to escape in the room the club provided for me. Unfortunately it was no sanctuary; not a place where I could become Zen with the night and evaluate the pluses and minuses experienced during the hours before.
In fact even the word room was hardly fitting for where I was staying. Room implies space; instead the enclosure the club provided for me was so small that I could stand in the middle of it and touch both of the damp walls with my fingertips and if I jumped I would smack my head against the ceiling. I kept thinking that instead of it being my first DJ gig in Norway I had been sentenced to a month in the Tonsberg jailhouse.
And it was impossible to regulate the temperature in my cell; it was either baking hot or freezing cold thanks to an antique oil-filled radiator that had two heating positions, either fully on or all the way off. And when it was turned on it would thump, thump, thump every twenty minutes throughout the night as the boiling oil attempted to flow around the rusted coils.
The metal-framed bed was deliberately narrow and short so it could be squeezed into that tiny space and my feet hung out four inches over the bottom of the thin mattress. The communal toilet and shower were down the hall and shared with six other people who had never been taught about the purpose and use of a flush.
It was trial by fire; maybe Tor figured that if I could survive this I could get through anything. But as the days wore on I resolved not just to survive, but to thrive.
I pulled myself together and pretended that this rundown, wood-paneled bar that could barely hold one hundred people was the best club in Europe. It would become the place to be in Tonsberg—not that the rest of the town gave me much competition!
I took a risk and announced that from now on Fridays would be Countdown Night. I would stay away from the standards they would scream out for, stick to my guns and only play the latest songs from the UK and US and “count down” from number twenty to number one starting at eleven o’clock until closing at midnight. It was a huge gamble because this was “drunk hour” when the alcohol hit hardest and patience and understanding were all but forgotten, but it paid off and quickly the crowd grew to love it. By the second week the club was packed early and people stayed until closing.
DJing Countdown Night at Bonanza in Tonsberg
My first promo picture
I started a “rock night” on Wednesdays and oldies, “Gammel Night,” on Thursdays. As word spread new people began coming in and lots of girls started showing up to check out the “English DJ with the cool music” and my single bed became even smaller and it was rare that I had to turn on the heater at all.
Two weeks into the gig Tor drove down from Oslo to see me.
“Here are your promo pictures and your schedule for the next two months.”
He passed me the pictures we had taken in Oslo and two contracts. I was at Ands Inn in Bardufoss in December, Sesame Restaurant in Tromso in January. I was happy. Anything to get bailed out of this prison sentence. I couldn’t sign the contracts quickly enough as though the very act of putting my name in triplicate on those forms would hurry the days away. It was a thrill knowing that I’d passed the test and soon my one month sentence of hard labor in Tonsberg would be commuted and I would be free to move on.
“I got the club in Bardufoss to pay for your flight and for the overweight charge for your records,” Tor told me.
Flight? Doubly cool! That really was rock-star territory. “How far away is Bardufoss?” I asked.
“It’s a little north of here,” replied Tor with a smile.
FLYING NORTH
A little north was an understatement. The NAS 737 flew for more than 1,700 kilometers before skidding to a halt on the icy runway a little after 1pm on December 1, 1974. The two-and-a-half-hour flight was packed full and it was the first time I had seen live chickens carried on a plane.
If you want to travel north in Norway in the winter you have two options: either take an ice-breaker up the coast or fly. It’s impossible to drive as the mountain ranges that run up and down the center of the country like a rocky spine for more than 800 miles, are covered with snow and the roads become impassible for several months.
The preferred method of transportation is the flying bus and if you have a chicken or a small goat to take north then you put it in a crate and it goes in the cabin with you. I never knew when I was boarding a plane in Norway in mid-winter if I would end up sitting next to a businessman holding a briefcase or a farmer clutching a turkey.
As I made my way down the stairs to the tarmac it was impossible to tell if it was one in the afternoon or one in the morning. Bardufoss is more than 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle and by December the sun has set for its winter slumber and won’t rise again for almost three months when it peeks above the horizon on February 26, giving cause for the drunken celebration known as Sol Fest.
I was met at the airport by the owner of Ands Inn, Knut, a
big, jovial guy who helped load my heavy suitcase packed with records into the back of his Mercedes, and off we went to the club. Knut explained that Ands Inn was in Andselv, a suburb of Bardufoss and had a population of only 900 people!
But the club was always busy because of the NATO base nearby. It was manned by several thousand US troops who were actively preparing counter measures to the Soviet invasion that the Cold War was threatening to bring down upon the free world’s head. The GIs needed to blow off steam and they would head off base to Ands Inn to drink and party, and to make sure the soldiers had females to dance with the US Army would helicopter girls in from the nearby towns.
It was a win-win for the military; the night flights were perfect training exercises for the pilots and crew, and it gave the GIs on the ground a chance to escape from the latest issue of Penthouse and flirt with a real girl instead.
Most evenings I would stand outside the back entrance of Ands Inn and gaze into the night sky as I waited to see the blinking lights of the massive helicopters approaching. It sent a chill down my spine every time they swept into view: it looked like news footage I’d seen from Vietnam but instead of Charlie hiding in the brush waiting to shoot them down, the incoming choppers were greeted by the sound of George McCrae and “Rock Your Baby” blaring across the snow.
DJing at Ands Inn was a blast. The American soldiers loved the soul music I had in my collection and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to break out James Brown, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. I met some great girls at the club but they were, at best, brief encounters as they had to be back onboard the helicopters by 1a.m. to return to their hometowns. So I broke one of my personal rules and dated a couple of the waitresses, though fortunately no unpleasant work situations arose from those romantic interludes.
One thing I really enjoyed was getting to know the soldiers. I’ve always had great respect for the military and those who serve. My father was in the Royal Artillery during World War II and retired holding the rank of major in 1946, and my time doing sub-aqua training with the RAF while at college filled me with even more appreciation for their selfless devotion to duty.
On my nights off, when the GIs invited me onto their base to watch movies, I was there! I didn’t have to be asked twice. They would pick me up at Ands Inn in a half-track, a weird vehicle that looked like the illegitimate love child of a tank and a truck. The front wheels were normal but the back wheels were replaced by an articulated tread. This gave the vehicle the ability to cross virtually any terrain and made for an exhilarating trip.
We would race over the ice and hard-packed snow with the half-track’s twin exhausts rumbling like angry thunder behind us. If there had been a recent blizzard or snowfall, which was a common occurrence this far north of the Arctic Circle, the driver would yell out, “Hold on!” and speed towards the biggest drift and plunge the half-track into the mountain of soft powder and blast out of the other side sending geysers of snow exploding high into the sky. It was a thrill ride courtesy of the United States Armed Forces.
Once we reached the base and piled out of the transport, we’d hurry across the frozen ground into the makeshift screening room where a projector would throw the images onto a stretched king-sized sheet. With cold beers in hand from the commissary we would sit on canvas folding chairs, bundle ourselves in camo-green sleeping bags to keep warm and watch two movies in a night.
One that stuck with me and proved to be a major influence on my future was a low-budget western, They Call Me Trinity, starring Terence Hill. I had just come inside from a withering snowstorm and sub-zero temperatures as the movie started. It opened with Trinity and his horse crossing a parched desert landscape under a blazing sun and cloudless blue sky. When the caption “California” appeared on screen, I made a mental note to myself that I should definitely make a point to go there someday just to escape this numbing chill. I didn’t realize then that the seed the film planted within me would grow to end up influencing the rest of my life.
The month sped by and after a raucous New Year’s Eve party at Ands Inn it was time to say goodbye and head even further north to Tromso. After a four-hour, hundred-mile bus ride past fjords and waterfalls I arrived at the most northerly city in the world. But it was so different to what I had expected. Instead of igloos and polar bears there were heated sidewalks, endless coffee shops and a bustling shopping area. This town was big!
Tromso is an island just off of the Barents Sea and connects to the mainland by a spectacular bridge which links it to Tromsdalen and the rest of Norway. Tromso alone has a population of more than 75,000 people, plus add to that the crews of the fishing fleets plying the Arctic Ocean and North Sea who would dock to unload their catch and then look for a welcoming bar to spend their hard-earned wages and the population was boosted even higher. As a result, Tromso was able to support three different discos and had a thriving nightlife.
It was there that I met up with two other English DJs who were on the road like me, Peter Brown and Geoff Collins. Peter and I became firm friends and our paths would cross many times as we zigzagged our way across Europe. We also had the same love for the ladies and were amazed to find out just how sexually aggressive the girls were in Tromso. With the city cloaked in perpetual darkness for those winter months there was little for them to do except hang out, go dancing and find a guy for the night. And being the new kids in town and the “star” DJs from overseas headlining their favorite club for a month we became the notches on their belts rather than vice versa.
I’d learned a little about that attitude from Tove two months before, and I was fine with it. It was chauvinism reversed and Peter and I were happy to support this new suffragette movement.
On still nights in Tromso when there was no wind, I would walk the half mile back to my apartment from Sesame Restaurant. Because the temperature would be as low as thirty below zero all the moisture was frozen from the atmosphere and the air became so dry that you didn’t feel the cold. However should that change and there be even a breath of wind the frigid air would tear right through your clothes and your bones would lock up from an instant chill. But on those still, clear nights the cold was forgotten as the most-incredible natural spectacle would appear across the firmament.
From horizon to horizon the heavens would erupt in a display the likes of which I had never seen before, the Aurora Borealis, the northern lights. The entire night sky would shimmer, twist and crackle as nature sent her electric pulses through the magnetosphere. Curtains of colors; greens, blues, purples white and even pink, would flex and fold in every direction. A thousand years before, the Norse warriors believed that they were seeing the “Bifrost Bridge” – the gateway to Valhalla. It was easy to understand why they felt that way; the sight was so breathtaking and beautiful. Staring up at that celestial light show became a bucket-list moment for me before I even knew what a bucket list was.
Two weeks into my residency in Tromso I received a call from Tor in Oslo. He asked if I would stay on for a second month up there. The owners loved me and the crowd that I was bringing in packed the house every night and so they wanted to extend my contract. In return they would pay any transportation costs to my next town.
I was fine with the arrangement. Tromso was being very good to me. Tor was happy to hear that and told me that my next gig would be at his number-one club in all of Norway, Hotel Norge, in Bergen, the country’s second-biggest city. This was exciting news as Peter and Geoff both said great things about Bergen.
February 14, 1975
The local paper got wind of the sensation that the trio of English DJs were creating in Tromso and ran an article on us.
I mailed the article along with a translation back home to a couple of newspapers in England and sure enough within a week a big story appeared in the Herald Express with the headline:
No Winter of Discontent although in the Frozen North
It began with: Dick Sheppard’s winter currently means perpetual twilight, temperatures of minus-23 degrees
and six-foot snow drifts. And he enjoys it!
My parents saw the article and were thrilled, and they weren’t the only ones to read it. I received a telegram and letter from Brian Clifford in Torquay offering me my choice of residencies with Soundwave at clubs for the summer season including The Yacht, Devon Coast and the peak of them all, The Casino, which boasted three dance floors and a more-than-hour-long wait to get in during the holiday months. It really began to feel that things were happening and moving in the right direction.
As my residency in Tromso wrapped up I boarded another plane and flew south to Norway’s west coast and the gorgeous city of Bergen. Tor had been right about Hotel Norge. It was a fantastic club, located in the very heart of the town and packed with beautiful girls who were excited that a new, ‘hot’ English DJ had come to town. There was nothing I would have changed; the DJ booth was designed by someone who actually knew what a DJ’s needs were, with the turntables, records and cassette player all within easy reach, the staff was super friendly and respected the DJ as the entertainer who brought the crowds in and kept them there, and the apartment was beautiful.
Tom’s Apartments was the rather unoriginal name of the building I stayed in but that was the only disappointing thing about it. The location could not have been better; it was on the waterfront of Bergen’s massive harbor that had been refuge to the raiding fleets of Ragnar Lothbrok and his longships ten centuries before. It featured three rooms and a kitchen and they all had panoramic views over the water and looked towards Floyen, one of the seven snow-capped mountains that ring Bergen.
World in My Eyes: The Autobiography Page 9