When Pirates Ruled the Waves

A voyage around my life in music.

I’m not a fan of John Miles, but it’s a truism for me that “Music was my first love”. I can still see my Father, in my mind’s eye, walking down the drive carrying a brand new Ekco Record Player with the family’s first ever 45 - Lipstick on your Collar by Connie Francis. I was 3 years old in 1959 and had absolutely no comprehension of the meaning of the lyrics at all, but danced and danced to that song and sung it at the top of my voice.

A few years later I started buying “singles” in earnest. During the school holidays I would dutifully catch the Bus with my Mother, from Honey Lane (by the Playing Fields before the Primary school was built) to Waltham Abbey town, every Tuesday and Friday to assist with her shopping - Freezers had not yet arrived, so a minimum of twice a week shopping in Pellings was necessary. But I had an ulterior motive. Diggin’s shop in Sun Street sold all sorts of electrical goods, bicycles and…..Single Records - only the Top Ten I think, but I would save up my pocket money until I reached 6/8 and another gem would be added to my collection. I still have many of them, and there is a large early Beatles selection, including some EPs as well.

I’ve just popped up to my Den and had a look at my remaining collection of 45s - a reasonably eclectic mix: lots of Beatles as previously mentioned, plus Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, Chubby Checker, Manfred Mann and the Kinks (I think these last two must count as “edgy” in the day) and the ubiquitous Brian Poole and the Tremeloes - Brian was a “local lad”, from Cheshunt I think, his brother Norman had a Butcher’s shop in Foxes Parade in the Abbey some years later, so I obviously liked to support local talent. I also found a couple of Cliff Richard ones, which I’m hoping were bought by my older Sisters and also one by Kathy Kirby, definitely not one of mine, probably my Fathers, I recall he was quite a fan, not necessarily of her singing but because Kathy was rather easy on the eye, I recall. Seeing those Gerry & the Pacemakers singles (including their most famous You’ll Never Walk Alone) reminds me of pestering my dear, long suffering Father to take me to see the film starring them entitled ‘Ferry cross the Mersey” in 1965 when I was 9. My Father indulged me as always, and he drove to Waltham Cross, which then had two Cinemas, about a couple of hundred yards apart. The Embassy, which was very salubrious and The Regent, fondly known as “The Fleapit”, this is where our film was showing. My Father was in his mid 50s then and had absolutely no interest in “Pop Music” and I’m so grateful that he allowed me to pursue my interest; and I forgave him for his very loud snoring after about twenty minutes into the film…….

The Beatles played a major part in my life in the 1960s. I remember being really disappointed that my two sisters didn’t take me with them to the London Palladium in 1963 when they went to see the FAB FOUR there. My Christmas present from Mother & Father in 1964 was the LP “Beatles for Sale”, which had been released a few days earlier. After Christmas lunch I removed myself to the Living room and put the record on non stop for several hours at at a very anti-social volume, whilst swivelling around in a very 1960s Yellow Leather chair (a bright Green one was also available). By then, the Ekco had been replaced by a Grundig Radio and Record Player with gorgeous wooden speakers which fitted perfectly on the G-Plan Librenza bookcase and cocktail cabinet…Etsy eat your heart out…

The year 1964 was also very significant for Pop music as it was when Pirate Offshore radio began in England. I was quite precocious both musically and also politically- at the age of eight or nine I was devouring political biographies and books and had developed a very early belief in the freedom of the individual that I maintain to this day. I can recall Sunday afternoon political conversations with my Father after Sunday lunch when we’d debate an article out of the Sunday newspaper. Anyway, this meant that putting aside my interest in hearing a vast range of amazing music, the like of which would never be played on the BBC Light Programme, I really enjoyed the fact that the Pirates were sticking it to the staid old BBC- although I probably didn’t articulate it quite like that aged eight!

One of the songs that I recall that Radio Caroline played incessantly in 1967 (possibly because it was financially to their advantage…) was a song by David McWilliams called “The days of Pearly Spencer”, a great tune. On August 15th 1967 the Marine Offences Act etc came into force, promoted by Anthony Wedgewood Benn, a so called believer in freedom, and Radio Caroline became the only Free Radio broadcaster left in the UK (although Radio Veronica continued in the Netherlands and I consequently learned a little Dutch) broadcasting until March 3rd 1968. I devoured the broadcasts of Radio Caroline and the music that she played, I couldn’t understand why something so good had been stifled by the Government- it seemed to me then that they’d done it just because they could…this shaped my political view and it hadn’t changed much since.

The year 1967 saw me starting at Secondary School and for a while academic work replaced my interest in music, apart from my regular weekly fix of Top of the Pops, with particular attention to Pan’s People, my favourite dancer being Dee Dee Wilde; this was around the same time that I had a poster of Brigitte Bardot on my bedroom wall straddling a Harley Davidson …another passion ( the motorcycle 😂) that continues to this day. Within a few years I’d joined a small but elite group at school…The Progressive Music Club! We were an official school club and were allocated a small room up in the gods at the top of the old Gym building where fags would be smoked and music would be listened to, ‘twas there that I had my first experience of Grand Funk Railroad and the “Live” album is still a top member of John’s Life in Music. I remember swopping a Groundhogs Album for the Beatles Double White (which I still have) and although I kept coming back to Liverpool, my horizons were widening.

In the summer of 1969 I recall being really pissed off (not that I used such terminology then) that my parents wouldn’t permit me to go to the Isle of Wight Festival that year…after all, I was 13 for goodness sake 😂, I still haven’t got over missing Dylan, The Who, Free and the Bonzos…..

I remember my sister Claire taking me to Pearson’s in Enfield to buy an LP in June 1970 for my 14th Birthday. In the Record Department they had a number of little booths with doors on where you could ask for a snippet of a record to be played, put on enormous headphones, and sample your album before committing your hard earned to buy it. I think that the price for an LP then was about 32/6. My album of choice in 1970 was from the Beach Boys - Sunflower - a great album that I still have and exercise regularly on my record deck.

I then fast forward to October 1973, I’d left school a year before and done half of a Business Studies course - I was convinced I’d learnt enough in half the course and with half a century of hindsight was probably correct, so October 1973 saw me passing my Motorcycle and Car driving test in the same week and starting work the following Monday. But the most significant thing that happened that autumnal week was finally convincing Sue that I was the one of her many suitors that she should “go out with”. As part of my wooing I took her to the Walthamstow Granada to see A Clockwork Orange - well, I enjoyed it…and then a couple of weeks later to the Rainbow Theatre Finsbury Park to see Donovan. It was in the midst of the Three Day Week, with rolling electricity cuts and the theatre was lit by candle light - very romantic, particularly when he sung “The intergalactic laxative will get you from here to Mars” - one of my favourites. Reader…I don’t know why she’s stayed with me!

By 1974 we had at last got some independent radio stations in the UK and I recall one Sunday morning cleaning my Triumph Vitesse listening to Capital Radio 539 and this most amazing song came on the radio (which was quite loud…our neighbours were elderly..probably late 50s and obviously therefore deaf 😂) The song was “Ready or Not” by this relatively unknown singer songwriter from Laurel Canyon called Jackson Browne, and so a love affair began which continues to this day.

A couple of years later found us at the 1975 Midsummer Music Festival at Wembley Stadium, before any curfews. You could get smashed just by breathing . The lineup started before lunchtime and included Stackridge (?), Rufus, featuring Chaka Khan (little knowing that nearly 50 years later my Choir Leader’s CockerPoo would be named after her) Joe Walsh, who emerged from a giant box to henceforth join The Eagles, the Beach Boys (who stole the show) and Elton John, who didn’t.

A musical hiatus then ensued, I found it hard to forgive Punk for what they did to Prog Rock (although I now have), but by the 80s and 90s my earlier Faves had discovered that there was a lifetime career to be had in music and came back…and have never gone away (unless they had no say in the matter 🥲). Many, many visits to the RAH to see EC IS GOD, I still grab hold of my beloved if “Wonderful Tonight” is played anywhere and start a slow smootch… Then in the 90s I discovered Country Music with my daughter Ella, nothing too mainstream, we’ve always like the Road least travelled, but our number one fave is Deana Carter who seems never to have travelled far from Nashville, let alone the USA. The (Dixie) Chicks are a band we love and thankfully they do tour the UK. Gretchen Peters is another Americana country singer that we’ve greatly enjoyed and Ella and I were privileged to see her last UK performance earlier this year before she retired from touring. Jackson Browne and Squeeze have also continued to be up there in my top 5, such talented songwriters

Two night ago I went to Crazy Coqs in Piccadilly with Ella and Phil, a good friend from Rock Choir to see Nerina Pallot, surely the most talented singer songwriter to emerge in this country for the last 30 years…in Phil’s words “she’s freaking cool”

And so we come up to date…Rock Choir is for me a musical lifeline, I’m discovering songs that I never knew existed and friends who love music as much as I do, truly, this is JOHN’S LIFE IN MUSIC.