My second bike - the Raleigh.

                                                      BUDDY HOLLY

Hey!! A lot of people liked the story of my first bike last week and the frustrations of the 13 year old boy that I used to be when it came to girls; well things didn't get better with girls for years.

I might have said this before but I left school at the age of 15; that was the legal age for leaving. It was not called a high school and the only thing we received when leaving was a 'leaving certificate.'

I remember receiving that as if it was yesterday; we had to line up in the school hall to shake hands with the headmaster who would shake our hands with the one hand and slip us the certificate with the other. I can remember the look on his face; it was a look of concern as I wasn't at all ready for the big wide world of work; I was a child.

His name was WH Griffin and he would sign our end of term reports in red ink – this is disgusting! - or could do better!

I think he was a nice man but the little bit of authority had gone to his head as he sat in his Ivory Tower of an office. He really didn't want me to leave and had many a talk with me about staying on; but what would I do? Look through the window to see what the weather was doing and dream of playtime?

I used to pretend I was in a movie playing a school child and whenever I was excused to go to the lavatory I would walk the corridors of the school pretending to be one of Flash Gordon's guards; it's a wonder they didn't put me away; my parents used to call me John Barrymore.

I left school that day and hardly saw any of my school friends again. I had loads of friends at school, I was never bullied and never bullied anybody. I had my fair share of fist fights, mostly when I first started the secondary school, I was no trouble and I was popular with my mates but that was it. None of them lived near me so I lost touch.

I left school with no job to go to and no idea of what I wanted to do; the first thing I had to do was to register at the Labour Exchange and they sent me for a job in the centre of Birmingham at an Army and Navy Store called Oswald Bailey.

It was my first interview and they offered me the job as a warehouseman – 'starting Monday.'

I was delighted; I would be earning money and I had a job – a job!! I was a working man and when I got home I found that that was my new nickname; The Working Man!

My dad gave me his Raleigh bicycle, or said I could use it to go to work, and off I went on that first day; it was a 'sit up and beg' bicycle with old men's handlebars and brakes but it saved me bus fair.

The job was great for five days or so; I had to receive goods at the 'goods inward' door and put what I received into stock after checking them and signing them in.

I had to climb ladders and when I was up the ladder the supervisor would put his hand up my legs to try and feel my arse and genitals. Well I was at a Secondary Modern Boys School and I was used to such foolery. I did what I did at school and lashed out with my feet. He didn't like it and said he was only joking but it didn't matter how many times I kicked he still did it.

I wouldn't tell my dad as he would have killed him; my dad taught me and my brother to box so we could always look after ourselves at school but at work with the really big fella and me being so little the boxing lesson didn't really work – I have to say it didn't really shock me; but I didn't like it.

I heard some tall tales from other boys of bullying in the work place and initiation ceremonies so what I was getting was quite tame. The big thing I remember from Oswald Bailey's is that Buddy Holly died when I worked there and that was the worst day of my life. Nobody there knew who he was and a fella called Ken Lloyd, who was a jazz fan, said it was a good thing he died as he was a terrible influence on music. Little did he know what influence Buddy had on all people of my age but I didn't take offence as most of them were squares and they liked Johnny Mathis and people like that.

Oh the other thing I remember about the place was a blonde girl called Brenda Smith. She worked in the office and was the only other person of my age who worked there; I have no idea how we kind of became buddies – that's all I can say we were – buddies.

I didn't know her that well but when I was offered a job on the post office she asked me if I would still be able to see her. So I started meeting her after work, on my dad's bike, and I would walk her to her bus stop.

She would get the 45 bus along Pershore Road to where she lived.

We had many a conversation on the way and sometimes I would leave my bike and take the bus with her so far and when we passed the cinema on Bristol Road she would say things like 'when are you going to take me to the pictures?'

I never caught on to that.

She told me she lived at 99 Baldwin Road and so I would take a bike ride up there later in the evenings and then the next day I would tell her and she would say 'let me know next time you come and I'll meet you.'

Again I didn't catch on.

I have often thought about that first job at Oswald Bailey; there were many departments there. They had a shoe and boot department, a tent department, clothes and other things to do with camping or the military.

The salesmen wore suits and were all ages. An older gentleman would take his hat off to women in the street – he was old school – and was nearing retirement I would say.

There was a strange hierarchy; the salesmen thought they were a cut above us poor buggers in the warehouse; they wore suits and we wore brown cow gowns.

The owner of the company was the son of Oswald Bailey and there was a Mister Robbins, who was the managing director, and a Mister Sharrat,who was the manager of the shop; Mister Robbins was the man who gave me the interview and hired me and asked what my plans were if I got the job and I told him I was after promotion – as if???

We worked a five and a half day week having a half day on Wednesdays.

On the first Wednesday we exited the building through a side door and standing there by the door was Mister Sharrat.

Dressed in his light grey suit which showed off his pot belly and slight balloon figure, he stood there puffing on his cigarette as people filed passed him; 'good afternoon Mister Sherrat', they would say, 'good afternoon,' he would say.

Sometimes he didn't puff on the cigarette but would let it burn in his fingers leaving a long piece of ash.

Everybody smoked as they filed passed. I don't know why they felt they had to smoke as they smoked all day in those days without restrictions: news readers smoked, politicians smoked everybody smoked all the time.

And so it went on - 'Good afternoon, Mister Sharrat,' 'Good afternoon' and then I passed him – 'ta ta Mister Sharrat,' and off I went into my first afternoon off and the bike ride home.

The next day when I got into work the warehouse manager came up to me and said – 'ta ta Mister Sharrat!! Ta ta Mister Sharrat!! You say Good afternoon Mister Sharrat! Say it!!'

Yes right – little did they know, 1959, that The Beatles were only around the corner.

When the music died.

I watch The Daily Politics most days and they usually have a little “guess the year” quiz; today I got the answer right as it was 1958; I knew that because one of the songs they played was “Teddy Bear” by Elvis Presley. That was from the film Loving You which blew my mind at the time. I had heard Elvis on the radio and I hadn't heard anything like him. But to see him in that movie must have influenced a generation. I knew I was still at school when I saw the film so the question was easy.

I left school in December 1958 age 15 and started work a week after my birthday. I worked at a place called Oswald Bailey which was an Army & Navy Store; I think they were supposed to be army surplus but it wasn't; it was new stuff which included camping equipment, work boots and, heaven forbid, dungarees.

I worked as a warehouseman – guess where? Yes in the warehouse; I had to climb steps and ladders to reach boxes of shoes and the warehouse manager would put his hand up my leg; the dirty bastard. He was a well built fella with a lisp and I would kick out at him. It didn't put him off as he was always at it but I still kicked him and sometimes I would connect.

The guy driving a railway truck would ring the bell once in a while and I found out that my dad was usually their boss; they all seemed to like him and the lisp found out too and wondered why he hadn't given me a job and I said be careful where you wander you might get lost – okay I had a smart mouth! 

“Wonder I said – not wonder!” Yes he said I shaid!!

One day my dad rang the bell and I told the lisper that my dad was at the back door and he must have thought I had told him about his wandering hands as he looked a little nervous as this blue eyed Irishman looked him up and down.

I was at Oswald Bailey's when the music died; Buddy Holly – February 1959 and I was the only one in the place who even knew who he was; it happened again in 1980 when John Lennon was shot; I was working with a load of squares.

With John Lennon I was working on the night shift at a bakery trying to get some money together to pay back taxes. Most of the other workers there were ex-cons, Pakistanis and Indians and of course they had heard of The Beatles but not individually.

But back to Oswald Bailey's – the warehouse manager would send me across to Woolworth's at the Bull Ring for ice buns and those days, no matter what anybody ever tells you about them, were terrible. It was a terrible place to be where everybody knew their place with their shiny shoes and Brooks Brothers suits. Their short back and sides where the only spice they ever had on their tables was Daddy's Sauce.

Olive Oil was only sold at the Pharmacies – people cleaned their ears out with it - but there was rationing because of the war and that was the price we had to pay.

The only rebels were the teddy boys and up to about 1957 they were drafted in to the army, navy or air force where they had their hair cut off; and then when they were demobbed they had changed; no longer rebellious. 

We didn't know any better – I was in the army cadets at the time and 16 year old sergeants would shout down my ear on their journey to being full time mature bullies; because that's what they were and are; they have to bully the soldiers as they need to make an obedient squaddie out of them so they would jump when told and kill. I would hear phrases like “when I shout shit, jump on the shovel.”

Of course I reached the age of 16 and I was the 16 year old sergeant but managed not to be a bully. Later I joined The Royal Warwickshire Regiment (TA) which actually paid us as they filled our heads with propaganda. I did quite well as I used to teach map reading and weapon training in the cadets so it all came easy and I took the selection course for something called the SAS.

Lots of times we would show up in civvies and in those days I would wear a black shirt and white tie. So others said I looked like a spy so guess my nick name; James Bond. I had never heard of him, of course, as this was way before the movies and sometimes in later years I would see one of the others and I was still known as Jim.

But back for the last time to my days at Oswald Bailey which didn't last long as after a few months I went to work at the post office as a messenger. 

My mother always wanted me to work at the post office as it was a job for life and, to be honest, you didn't have to work. I went along with it because I wanted a job on the motor bikes.

The post office had a youth club and at lunch time we would go to the club to play tables tennis and snooker and listen to the records; the number one in the charts was It Doesn't Matter Any More by Buddy Holly. The song still haunts me now.

I was sent out of the town centre to one of the burbs and I was an indoor messenger delivering mail from office to office and the office we worked in was where we played table tennis every day for the year I worked there till I was old enough to work on the motor bikes; why didn't turn out to be Andy Murray?

I can't believe that was such a long time ago even though I can still sprint – no longer 100 yards but 50 when the bus is at the stop, but those years, even though they were dark days with politicians calling the press by their surnames and everybody knowing their place, I learned a lot – I learned to retaliate to sexual advances from older men – and there were a lot of them – and I learned what work was; by not doing any: I never thought that doing up to 100 miles a day on a motor bike was work; playing table tennis every day was work and when I became an actor I didn't really class it as work. But it was even though most other people would class it as play.

I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.

Buddy Holly, Norman Petty and PAYOLA in The King of Clovis.

I recently finished a book about Buddy Holly and his one time manager Norman Petty called The King of Clovis by Frank Blanas.

I suppose most people, who like pop music, have heard of Buddy Holly but I'm not sure if they realise just how good he was at singing, playing the guitar and what a brilliant songwriter he was. 

If you listen to early Beatles stuff you will know just how influential he was and still is.

I have almost every track he ever recorded and then some; I don't have access to them all the time as some of the stuff is on vinyl but I find new sessions all the time as he filled in some of the time in Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, NM.

It is said that he was a session guitarist there but no – he was world famous when he played on a few sessions as a favour.

I have always known about Norman Petty and what he did with Buddy Holly – he was his producer and a great producer he was; maybe the best.

Among the titles I have are recordings of That'll Be The Day and Maybe Baby, both recorded before Buddy Holly met Norman Petty. 

The songs were written by Buddy; he used a few names to credit his writing – Charles Hardin Holly was his full name and he used variations of those names but one name he never used as a songwriter was Norman Petty.

But when he re-recorded the two songs mentioned above at Norman's recording studio in Clovis, NM, there was another writer added to Buddy's name and that was Norman Petty.

Like every other Buddy Holly fan I thought Petty ripped Buddy Holly off by putting his name on the record as one of the songwriters and in a way that's what he did.

But in another way he gave Buddy and The Crickets free studio time – also to lots of other acts, groups of bands.

Acts usually have to pay for studio time for their recordings; there is no fairy godmother who pays for it and what usually happens (or should I say happened back then) is that the act is given studio credit, then an advance and then maybe salary which usually meant that they were so confused that they didn't know who owned what, how much they were worth or even where they were in the world – or where they were on the planet, as people say now.

I have always known about producers adding their name to get song writing royalties as I remember someone being interviewed on the radio taking a song to the band leader Billy Cotton and when it was published the sheet music had Billy Cotton's name on it too.

When the songwriter asked about this Cotton replied 'that's show business, son.'

One time Elvis Presley let the cat out of the bag when his name was added as a songwriter to the great song Don't Be Cruel. He was asked, when being interviewed, how he'd written the song and he revealed that he didn't write it at all. So his name was never put on a song he didn't write again.

Another thing Buddy Holly fans knew he was almost broke when he died in the plane crash and only toured to pay the rent. 

We were told, and it was confirmed by his Widowed Bride** that Petty wouldn't let them have any money even though Buddy had begged him and was in tears well . . . you have to be careful who you believe.

I have heard Buddy's widow say that but it wasn't in the book.

There were other reasons Petty didn't pay Buddy and that was that he, Petty, hadn't been paid by the record company in the first place.

In the fifties there was such a thing called PAYOLA; this was a bribe to a deejay by record companies, managers and the rest of them. It was a huge business and trailblazers and pioneers of rock'n'roll, such as Alan Freed, went to gaol for it.

Norman Petty wouldn't pay PAYOLA and that is why Buddy didn't have any real big hits in that last year of his life – nobody was playing his records.

PAYLOLA didn't really catch on in the UK to the same extent but the mob didn't operate here as they did in America.

Another thing happened in Buddy's life when he went to New York – staying in the Edison Hotel, which I stayed on one day – he asked a girl at the record company for a date; by the time the date was over Buddy had proposed and been accepted.

This woman was the first member of the Yoko Ono, Linda (I bagged a Beatle) Eastman trio who broke up great groups; she was the one who came between Buddy and Norman Petty and Buddy and The Crickets. And that is the full story.

A lot of this is my speculation of course but it's all there in this book. All 534 pages, 9 inches by 12 inches and weighing in at about 8 pound and almost impossible to read in bed.

A must for a real Buddy Holly and The Crickets fan but also to anybody who is a fan of pop music.

** I can't remember if I cried

When I read about his widowed bride

But something touched me deep inside

The day the music died.

Don McLean - American Pie.

The Crickets, The Beatles, The Hownds!!!!

Buddy Holly.

 A long long time ago, I can still remember how the music used to make me . . . you know the lines but I have to say that the music did more than make me smile. In fact I suppose all my life I have judged people as to whether they are rock and rollers or not. 

A friend of mine said that once and the phrase kind of made the penny drop.

There are two rail stations in West Hampstead – one overground and the other the tube. All part of London Transport – or Transport for London as it is now called. Between those two stations, on the same side as the tube station, is an alley way and that's called Billy Fury Way. Here it is:

and here is a photo of the man himself.

Billy Fury; great British Rock singer of the 50s/60s.

 

I was walking passed there last year some time and as I approached it I said to the woman I was walking with 'hey look; Billy Fury Way.'

I don't know what she said but it was something like 'who was that' 'who cares' or something like that and I must have said to myself, or even thought out loud, writing as I spoke, 'what the . . . ay?? ' - I don't know which department of my mind that women went in to.

How can someone of my age – and she was around my age - not know who Billy Fury was, not be impressed by all the music that came when we were young?

I said to a good friend of mine once, 'I saw The Beatles live, you know' and he said 'I saw Nina Simone!!!

Didn't seem to impress did it? – he was my age too but obviously lived in an alternative world the same as the woman I was with that day.

With? I hear you say; no it wasn't my wife. I couldn't be married to someone for this long if she was a non-rock'n'roller – it just wouldn't have worked. Marriage is built more on tastes in music and senses of humour and without those the husband should get some ferrets.

But rock'n'roll music has been very important to me and in a way it changed society here – that and the end of conscription.

I said it did more to me than make me smile – it made me very happy. I always wanted to be a rock and roll singer but I lived in a world miles from any influence even though my parents loved rock'n'roll and pop music in general. 

I went on to appreciate a lot of classical music, the blues, Irish music, Cajun and loads of styles but never background or elevator music - and certainly not music they play over the phone when you are on the interminable wait for your party to answer.

When I was a child I got my dad's mandolin - which have 8 strings (four notes doubled) probably like the tuning of a tenor banjo or fiddle - put guitar strings on it and, instead of a plectrum, I used a penny. 

Yes you know what it sounded like and you would be right. Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!#$%

Also we made a bass out of a tea chest; here's one:

I can't remember what we used as a bass string but the American jug bands used similar things and probably made as much noise as we did.

When I was about 10, I went to a party and one of the party organisers asked if any of us could sing. My brothers shouted 'yes! Chris.'

I went up and stood there. 'Go on sing!' they said.

I stood there.

Eventually I sang the Christmas Carol Away in a Manger on one note.

And that was my pop music career till I joined the army cadets at 14.

After one of the Christmas parties there – and I was a sergeant by that time so must have been about 16 – a singing contest was organised; everybody got up and I won.

I sang the old Emile Ford song What do you want to make those eyes at me for and as I sang I waved my hands around. I won because I had the biggest applause and maybe because I was the sergeant.

Later we were going to form a band – a group really as a band plays at a band stand – and we were going to call it The Hownds. Great name aye? 

Although there was a better one staring us in the face.

I figured the greatest groups were The Crickets and The Beatles - both insects so we would be dogs. The Beatles got everything from the Crickets – well Buddy Holly - in fact Buddy Holly influenced more song writers, guitarists and singers than even they know.

When I was 20 I went with my brother to Butlins Holiday Camp in Pwllheli, in Wales. 

Also along were the other two members of The Hownds.

We told all the girls – and why would we go to Butlins if not for the girls – we were a group and some of them were very impressed.

Don't forget we hadn't sung or played together, hadn't even had a meeting, but my brother's mate, Rod, I was told, was a great guitarist and Dave said he would play the bass.

At Butlins I had a girl friend for a while in a girl group called The Crisdolins, or something like that – a Chris a Doreen and a Lynn, I suppose, and I was out with the Do. 

Do was very attractive but her friend looked like Jean Shrimpton!! 

They may have been a kind of fantasy group like The Hownds, who knows, but I did read some time later that a group who were doing well were once called The Crisdolins!!! You never know.

But it didn't happen did it.

I hardly sung again till I went in to the theatre as an actor and only recently recorded songs; although I wrote loads in the 70s when I learned how to do some guitar chord sequences but I don't know where half of them are.

Now what would be a better name than The Hownds? Well it was staring us in the face. My brother's mate, Rod, the one who played the guitar, was called Rod Gilbert.

We should have been called Gilbert and The Sullivans.

Rock 'n' Roll.

Buddy Holly

There is one thing about the Americans which I don't think they appreciate; I don't think they appreciate some of the things they have started, or invented if you like, which have influenced the world.

They think they invented the computer and the Internet – well they didn't.

A British computer scientist called John Berners-Lee started the Internet – and with a name like that he was probably Welsh – and the computer was invented by an Englishman called Charles Babbage in the 19^th Century, he was the first to conceptualise and fully programme a computer which he never developed but his son completed and simplified a version of the machine's analytical unit and gave it to the Science Museum in South Kensington where I believe it is still there to this day.

Alan Turing is generally considered to be the father of the modern computer; he was in the news recently as 2012 is his centenary.

But what am getting at?

I am getting at the great things Americans have given to the world; no not cooking or food, unless you like hamburgers and the dreaded Americano coffee, which the Italians think they invented, but the music.

They have given to the world some of the greatest music and they ignore this feat. And I'm not talking classical music either, even though I love Samuel Barber and Philip Glass.

Rock'n'Roll and jazz – that's what they gave us.

I used to attend many of the jazz concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and also the smaller ones at the Hollywood/Highland Centre (or Center) where they hold the Academy Awards.

My favourite, of course, is rock'n'roll. I have seen some great bands over there, in Los Angeles, who were largely ignored by the punters.

I saw The Blasters at The House of Blues but that was because they were the support group for Percy Sledge, and I think they were appreciated by the audience on that night, but a couple of years ago I went to a party at the Peterson Car Museum – well The Peterson Automotive Museum – as the local auctioneers, Bonhams & Butterfields, were selling a collection of Steve McQueen's motor bikes and cars.

There were quite a few motor-bike enthusiasts there who were full of hair and leather and who turned out to be the most gentlest of gentle creatures. These fellas stood around mainly in groups of blokes and some groups had their women and I got the impression, now and again, that they were Hell's Angels but they weren't.

At one time, during the evening, the actor Robert Patrick, who was in Terminator 2, came in with a politician and they stopped the band for a while, whilst he spouted some garbage about 'our boys in the front line' – they stopped the band.

Do you know who was playing?

None other than Ricky Nelson's son. He looked just like Ricky Nelson and sounded like him and he was singing his dad's songs – I'm not sure if he was Gunnar Nelson or Matthew Nelson - I was spellbound as he sang and the guitarist was playing just like his dad's great guitarist, James Burton.

I couldn't believe that they were being treated like background. Some excuse for a guitarist, whom I knew and could only play Bossa Nova, came up to me and said 'rubbish.'

That was enough to put him in my shit list!

Just listen to James Burton's guitar work for Ricky Nelson and later with Elvis Presley and see what I mean; and this guy was up to that standard but because it wasn't jazz he was thought of as 'rubbish.'

One of the songs he sang was his dad's song Garden Party, which his dad wrote in disgust after a Madison Square Garden audience booed him, because, in his mind, he was playing new songs instead of just his old hits; the song was about that Madison Square Garden Concert and was autobiographical; the younger Nelson, at the party, joked about it being autobiographical for him too.

All lost on the crowd that night.

Another time I went to a bar on La Brea, in Hollywood called the Lava Lounge, and the band – or the group – played and sang Buddy Holly songs and Bobby Fuller songs.

Again the crowd didn't even look at them.

I had heard many groups years ago play and sing Buddy Holly songs in fact before The Beatles that's what a lot of groups would do – Holly or The Shadows in Britain. But they couldn't quite get that guitar lick that Buddy played on Peggy Sue.

I asked someone I was with if he knew who the originator of the songs was and he guessed Elvis!!!! Arrrrgghhhhhhhh!!!!

All of them dead, now of course. Buddy Holly and Ricky Nelson in plane crashes and Bobby Fuller died mysteriously in Hollywood right by where we used to live.

He was found in his car dead; there's a bit of a complicated story about his death, which is maybe apocryphal in Wikipedea:

Bobby Fuller

Within months of "I Fought The Law" becoming a top 10 hit, Fuller was found dead in an automobile parked outside his Hollywood apartment. The Los Angeles deputy medical examiner, Jerry Nelson, performed the autopsy. According to Dean Kuipers: "The report states that Bobby's face, chest, and side were covered in “petechial hemorrhages" probably caused by gasoline vapors and the heat. He found no bruises, no broken bones, no cuts. No evidence of beating." Kuipers further explains that boxes for "accident" and "suicide" were ticked, but next to the boxes were question marks. Despite the official cause of death, some commentators believe Fuller was murdered.

Erik Greene, a relative of Sam Cooke, has cited similarities in the deaths of Cooke and Fuller. Fuller bandmate, Jim Reese, suspected that Charles Manson may have had something to do with Fuller's death but never provided credible evidence. A sensationalist crime website has speculated that the LAPD may have been involved because of Bobby's connection to a Mafia-related woman.

Over the street from where Bobby was found, is The Highland Gardens Hotel; Janice Joplin died in there from a drug overdose one night and they still rent out her room. Our kids would stay there when they came out to see us with their families.

So I am asking Americans to appreciate what you have and what you are really famous for overseas; it wasn't Ronald Reagan who brought the Berlin Wall down; it was pop music and another American product – Levi Jeans.

A few months ago I bought my 23^rd pair when I was in Los Angeles; when I was a lot younger I would buy a new pair of 501s, put them on and get into a bath - to shrink them to my shape - I think I had read about it somewhere. I don't do that any more as I don't think it works at all.

After a time, 501s get a bit bigger as you wear them and become 'old person's jeans' – as they are called by some people – but they're not really.

Levi Jeans started out being worn by cowboys and 'blue collar' workers in America so why the 'old person' moniker?

It's because the older you get, the shape of you changes – you can't help it, it isn't a crime or even a vice but and, by the way, I lied about the jeans I bought a few months ago being my 23^rd pair.

Rock On!!

Levi Jeans

worn with boots - as they should be.

John Lennon

It was John Lennon's birthday on Saturday – the 9th – he would have been 70 years of age; hard to believe. We were served with a lot of his music on the radio and on Saturday we watched the movie Imagine – for Beatles or John Lennon fans that movie is a must. You will see that George and Ringo played on the album Imagine so it was really another Beatles album without Sir Macka.

John Lennon has always been more important to me than The Beatles and John had more influence on society than the straights, the squares, realise and would probably accept.

I saw The Beatles, with my brother, three times in their very early days. Now isn't that something? Friends have said they saw Sinatra, Elvis, Nina Simone, Bing Crosby et al but they don't get it. We saw The Beatles – in their early days and The Beatles, with John's influence, changed things.

The Beatles made it ok to question authority; they tried to be working class, but they were never working class, they were students when students usually liked jazz. Lots of students liked jazz because students were supposed to like jazz but when The Beatles came along students started to like rock.

I was the number one Buddy Holly fan and The Beatles reminded me of Buddy Holly and that's why I drifted into them; the other Beatles used the harmonies of The Crickets and the black girl groups like The Shirelles and John's voice, on songs like Baby It's You and Anna from their first LP, is worth a listen to prove my point.

We had heard of The Beatles as they had a small hit with Love Me Do – by the way I've heard the 3 versions of Love Me Do with the three drummers: Pete Best, the session drummer and Ringo and Ringo's playing is far superior – so when they appeared on Thank Your Lucky Stars lip syncing to Please Please Me we knew who they were.

Please Please Me was a great song; John wrote it for Roy Orbison (slower) and was in the same bag as Buddy Holly so naturally my ears pricked up. Three of the Beatles had the famous 'Beatle hair cut' – not Ringo – and John stood with his guitar held high on his chest and his legs open like Elvis and it had an amazing affect on people; me in particular.

The following week Please Please Me shot to number two in the NME charts, and the following Sunday they were due to appear at our local dance hall, The Ritz in King's Heath. We would go there every Sunday to drink their brown ale, nut brown ale or Bruno brown ale, pick up girls and dance; more of the former and less of the latter two I'm afraid.

So we went to our usual spot at The Ritz and saw the most amazing show; not many girls came that night as The Beatles were a geezers (male) group; they were famous in Liverpool and they hadn't quite caught on with the girls yet.

They sang most of the songs from their first LP, Please Please Me, including A Taste of Honey and Twist and Shout and when their set was over we went down to the bar for our nut brown ales and who should join us but The Beatles. The rest of the crowd were still upstairs in the Dance Hall and we were at the little bar.

We didn't have any intimate conversation with them as they were very excited and photographers were asking people to have their photos taken with John and Paul and when they posed they would all shout ha ha ha haaaaaaa and the photo would be taken.

Then George came followed by Ringo; George wore a big fur coat; it would be easy to say there was something about The Beatles and that you could see it at the time but you could; you could see that they had the world at their feet.

We saw groups every week at The Ritz – look it up on line The Ritz, Kings Heath and the Regans who ran it – from The Rolling Stones to Freddie and the Dreamers; when Brian Poole and the Tremeloes came they seemed to have a million dollars worth of equipment, with a microphone each and clear succinct sound but The Beatles shared microphones – which is why their harmonies could be heard.

We saw them twice more; once more at The Ritz when they played their return engagement – and opened with Tony Orlando's version/arrangement of Beautiful Dreamer – but it was never the same. They were too popular and the girls drowned out the performance.

Before the Beatles it was the age of the angry young man – Look Back in Anger and all that and this spread into movies like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life and other movies but the great mass of youths in the early sixties and the Teddy Boys before them had never heard of Look Back in Anger and John Osborne and all that intellectual stuff that the educated were privy to, so when John Lennon started to ask questions – intelligent questions – we sat up and asked questions ourselves.

There's a piece of film where John is being interviewed, after the Beatles disbanded, and he is espousing peace and an American female interviewer says 'you have it all wrong my dear boy' in such a condescending way that when you see it you want to throw cushions at the TV set; he wasn't taken seriously all the time at the time but the FBI sure kept an eye on him and last week the FBI confiscated his set of finger prints from a New York auction.

So RIP John Lennon; in about two months it will be the 30th anniversary of his death; December 8th (although it was the 9th GMT at the time he was killed) and there will be other remembrances then; number 9.