Category: Blog

  • Richard Ames got one over that Noddy Holder

    Richard Ames got one over that Noddy Holder

    The games that were played by groups on the road to keep themselves amused through the boredom of touring in the Seventies – or then again just the fun of playing pranks on fellow musicians.

  • The Teenage Rage starts a new label

    The Teenage Rage starts a new label

    Falling out with Dick James when he started his own label, DJM, Larry struck out with a whole new world wide label called Penny Farthing Records with considerable success. They enjoyed many hits in many countries with the likes of Johnny Pearson Orchestra’s track, “Sleepy Shores”, let alone “Blue Is The Colour” by the Chelsea…

  • how Neil Rock went from Gonks to Beatles

    how Neil Rock went from Gonks to Beatles

    Hear the saga of how trying to manufacture those lovely Sixties soft toys called Gonks led them to acquiring the rights to merchandise those Beatles

  • Rock is the name

    Rock is the name

    Ibiza in a day was the brief as we headed off to film Neil Rock for the ongoing Davy Graham documentary. Neil was Davy’s busking mate in the early days and they went all over Europe so it is not surprising that Neil lives on this Spanish island. So lots more fascinating facts about the golden…

  • Terry Slater the eternal musician

    Terry Slater the eternal musician

    The stories from musician / publisher / manager of his life in the British and American music industry are the envy of many of those of us who are just a touch younger. Talk about right place, right time as a young market apprentice caught the the Rock ‘n’ Roll bug which swept him into…

  • from piano tuner to Abbey Road chief engineer

    from piano tuner to Abbey Road chief engineer

    Today’s treat was meeting up again with Haydn Bendall and that has been a while. He started at EMI’s Abbey Road studio in the early Seventies and rose through the ranks receiving as he says, a fantastic education working with all types of music, classical, pop, rock, middle of the road. The all round insight…

  • the guitar pickin’ interview

    the guitar pickin’ interview

    Just back from interviewing the hugely knowledgeable musician, Stefan Grossman for the ongoing film about Davy Graham. Stefan met him when he came over in 1967 as a young American avoiding the draft although Davy’s reputation had preceded him. In fact of course Stefan met all the British greats of the time: Eric Clapton, John Renbourn, Roy…

  • Buying a guitar in the Sixties

    Buying a guitar in the Sixties

    Don Craine here describes his guitar buying experience experience: I’d seen Keith Richard playing a Harmony over at the Eel Park Island, and I absolutely adored the sound. I scraped the money together, and I went along to Jim Marshall’s, because Albert’s Music Shop in Twickenham didn’t go as far as foreign guitars, or anything like this.…

  • The Teenage Rage

    The Teenage Rage

    Just had the pleasure of interviewing one of the British businesses legends, Mr Larry Page. From Hayes, Middx, he of course got a job at the EMI Records plant as did everyone local, but got spotted singing in a local pub and got to record his first record at Abbey Road, a version of That’ll Be The Day…

  • The Virgin press officer Years

    The Virgin press officer Years

    I have just had the pleasure of a long overdue meet up with Al Clarke who was the Virgin Records press officer from the early/mid Seventies to the late Eighties. We had both worked together at the short lived Raft Records in the early Seventies with a label roster of Family, Linda Lewis, Beckett, Kilburn & The…

  • Sir George Martin

    Sir George Martin

    His musical legacy is without peer in the world of British music – thank you Sir George

  • Editing again

    Editing again

    Back into a period of editing again at the moment, but this time it is book editing as I am working on the next volume from the interviews following up on having published the first volume as ‘Over, Under, Sideways, Down’. This is all at the same time as trying to marshal all the interviewees…