Liverpool Days, Liverpool Life.. Liverpool images and photographs

(GF)...How would you describe Liverpool before and after the rock n' roll boom?

(BH)...In Liverpool, it depended which area you came from. There were those green areas under the blue suburban skies such as Woolton, where John Lennon lived and the grimmer, greyer areas near the docks and in districts such as Dingle and Toxteth where Gerry & the Pacemakers and Ringo Starr resided in little crumbling terraced houses with outside toilets and no bathrooms

Generally, most of the kids in Liverpool existed just above the breadline. The days of Liverpool being a great port were over and when the Mersey Sound actually happened, the Daily Worker, a Communist newspaper, announced, “The Mersey Sound is the sound of 30,000 people on the dole.”

Leaving school there were few opportunities for jobs. Youngsters often became ‘apprentices’ which meant they were hired to work at a firm at an extremely low nominal wage in order to be taught a trade.

Few people had cars, telephones or televisions. What television there was appealed to an older generation – it was only a black and white BBC TV program which had lots of time-wasting, such as ten minutes of hands moulding a piece of clay or an endless look at a waterfall. There had been tentative programs about rock such as ‘Oh Boy’ which did have a big impact, but generally, television was mind-numbing and everyone spoke in clipped upper-class tones. It was the same with the radio. This was, once again, dominated by the BBC, appealing mainly to an upper, middle class and sometimes working class audiences with programmes such as ‘Family Favourites’ and ‘Worker’s Playtime’, which youngsters couldn’t relate to. Kids had to rely on Radio Luxembourg, a pop channel from Continental Europe which could be heard clearer in the north of England than the south.

Skiffle was the music that initially ignited the scene, its chief exponent being Scottish musician Lonnie Donegan, an idol of John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney. The attraction was that you could create music and not have to cripple yourself financially by buying expensive musical instruments. A home-made tea chest bass, a mouth organ, an acoustic guitar could get you going. Throughout Britain thousands of skiffle groups emerged. However, it was a short-lived trend, coming at the same time as a Trad Jazz boom, while in Liverpool, youngsters began to listen to Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Little Richard – and an incredible scene was being created.

Groups were playing in swimming baths, ice rinks, at cinemas between movies, in church halls, synagogues, the cellars of houses, youth clubs, town halls – literally, an amazing burst of teenage energy. The groups appealed to the kids because the musicians were also teenagers and they developed their music in their own style.

A sociological revolution was also taking place. America has its ‘baby boomers’ Britain had ‘the bulge.’ This referred to the children born towards the end and in the aftermath of the Second World War. By the end of the Fifties there were more teenagers in Britain than at any other time in history.

We wanted out own music, our own styles of clothes, our own means of expression. At the time the entire media was controlled and run by people a generation older than us. There were no reports of the music scene in the press – only that of the worse nature: when kids would rip a cinema apart watching a Bill Haley movie, or when Teddy Boys were caught in a gang fight.

If we wanted something we had to create it ourselves. I did my bit creating Mersey Beat.

Incidentally, I coined the phrase Mersey Beat to indicate the area I would be covering in the newspaper. The name became my copyright at the time. Throughout the coming years, until the paper ceased publication, the music scene was always referred to as the Mersey Sound or the Liverpool Sound, never Mersey Beat. To call the sound Mersey Beat is an anachronism and I don’t know how that came about, but it only began to be referred to that when the original Mersey scene had passed.

The youngsters were able to buy the records in local record stores and competed to create their own individual repertoires. Numbers such as ‘Alley Oop’, ‘Boys’, ‘Magic Potion’, ‘Little Egypt’, ‘Memphis Tennessee’, ‘Stupidity’, ‘Skinny Minnie’ in  addition to numbers previously recorded by artists such as Elvis Presley, Arthur Alexander, Carl Perkins, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis. A myth has since arisen that the groups got their records straight from America from ‘Cunard Yanks’, Liverpool men who sailed the Atlantic, but this isn’t true.

Another influence was Tamla Motown. Their records were distributed in Britain by Oriole American and the biggest sales were in Liverpool. I did regular coverage of the Motown artists – the first to do so in Britain – and the groups developed their own versions of Motown numbers, which I called ‘the Mersey Motown Sound.’ I got every Motown release and used to take the singles down to the Cavern and play them. After I played Stevie Wonder’s ‘Fingertips’, Ringo came up to me and asked if he could have it. I gave it to him and arranged for Oriole to send him a complete collection of Motown Records.

The groups didn’t slavishly copy the American records; they arranged them in their own style. The basic groups which gave birth to ‘The Mersey Sound’ were those with a basic line up of three guitars and drums, performing vocal harmony such as the Beatles, the Searchers, Gerry & the Pacemakers and the Swinging Bluejeans.

However, this tended to overshadow the fact that the musical landscape in Liverpool was far more extensive than that. Liverpool had been called ‘the Nashville of the North’ because it had more Country Music groups than anywhere else in Europe. The bands had their own Country Music Association, their own annual Grand Ole Opry at the Philharmonic Hall and their own clubs such as the Black Cat Club and Western Union.

There was also a black music scene, vocal groups influenced by Doo Wop such as the Chants – the Beatles backed them at the Cavern. The Chants didn’t succeed on record, but Eddie Amoo, one of the members, formed the Real Thing and topped the British charts in the early Seventies with ‘You To Me Are Everything.’ There was a thriving folk music scene, led by the Spinners, Britain’s most successful folk group. Liverpool had more comedians than any other city and also the successful poets such as Roger McGough and Adrian Henri. There were dozens of female singers, including the rock ‘n’ roll girl band the Liverbirds. It was an extensive scene, an exciting scene, there was music literally in every street. I doubt if such a scene existed anywhere else in the world.

Music in the city could last forever – and it has, but London, which controlled the music scene, then decided to move on and push groups from London and elsewhere. It became very difficult for other Liverpool bands to get any promotion after 1966 and talented artists such as Jimmy Campbell and Steve Aldo were unsuccessful despite incredible talent.

Virginia and I also moved down to London and became part of the ‘Swinging London’ scene. In the early 1970s I was press agent for a couple of Liverpool bands such as Liverpool Express and Our Kid, both of whom entered the charts – at the same time, other Liverpool groups such as Supercharge and Buster charted and it looked as if Mersey music might blossom again – but then punk arose.

In the meantime, a new music had been developing on Merseyside, with Eric’s in Matthew Street becoming the Seventies equivalent of the Cavern. It sprawled a host of fantastic groups, many of whom hit the charts. They included Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Echo & the Bunnymen, Orchestral Manouvres in the Dark, the Icicle Works, Teardrop Explodes and Big in Japan.

So music in Liverpool continues to thrive, although London still rules the musical roost. In recent years the talented female acts have made their mark, artists such as Mel C and Atomic Kitten, in addition to groups such as Coral.

(GF)...Was creating the first issue of "Mersey Beat" an easy process, or did you find struggles with putting out an independent music magazine in the early 60's?  I see "Mersey Beat" as one of the first independent/underground music magazines around and I was wondering what steps you had to take to make it happen. 

(BH)...In my early teens I was a member of the Liverpool Science-Fiction Society. In my spare time I used to illustrate various sci-fi fanzines in Britain, Sweden, America and Australia.

In Britain it was fanzines such as Ploy and Camber and I eventually published two issues of my own fanzine, Biped. Fanzines used to be the thing then and the Sci-Fi Society produced one called Space Diversions.

I also did work for the fanzines of one of my pen pals, Mick Moorcock. He was into Edgar Rice Burroughs and produced a fanzine called Burroughsania.

At night, with stencils and stencil pens, I’d work on the stencil sheets and a friend used a Gestetner machine to print them. I think we did 60 copies of each issue. After all these years I still remember the smell of the stencil sheets!

From the age of 12 to 15 I studied at Liverpool School of Art in Gambier Terrace. (as an aside: Cynthia Powell was another student – she went on to marry John Lennon; Les Chadwick was my best pal there and he took all the Beatles photos for me for Mersey Beat under the name Peter Kaye and another chum was Fred O’Brien who became head of the students union at the art college years later and turned down Brian Epstein’s offer of booking the Beatles back at the college for a nominal fee).

I asked the headmaster if they had a school magazine and he said ‘no.’ I asked if I could do one and he put me in a little room on the top floor opposite the staff rooms and I was provided with a typewriter and Gestetner machine. I produced a duplicated magazine I called Premier. I remember in the first issue I had Les write me a story called ‘The One-Legged Meat Ball.’ We were all into crazy humour at the time, inspired by the Goons.

At the age of 16 I went to Liverpool College of Art and the first thing I did was to ask the Registrar if I could use their Gestetner machine, which he allowed me to do and I produced a stencilled newsletter simply called Jazz. Jazz was popular at the time as there was a ‘Trad Jazz Boom’ which followed the Skiffle boom in Britain.

For some reason, University students had heard that I had produced amateur magazines and asked if I could edit Pantosphinx, their local charity magazine, published annually on ‘Panto Day,’ when students went through the city centre on floats collecting for charity.

So I worked on an issue for them, although I had to be referred to as deputy editor because I wasn’t a University student.

I used to hang around the Jacaranda coffee bar with John, Stuart and Rod Murray and a young guy rented a small room at the top of the building to sell second hand albums. I bought a copy of the ‘Picnic’ soundtrack from him. I can’t remember his name offhand, but he’d been aware I’d edited Pantosphinx and said that Frank Hessy, who owned the local music store had asked him to edit a magazine for him, but he didn’t know how, would I work on it with him? He took me to see Hessy and I agreed. The magazine had an awful name – ‘Frank Comments’, but I worked on it at a professional local printers, James E. James and drew the covers, laid it out and wrote features for it.

I’d considered publishing a jazz magazine on the same format as Frank Comments called ‘Storyville/52^nd Street’, but needed backing. I asked one local promoter who knew the people who owned the Storyville Jazz Club and asked him if the club would be interested in funding me. He said he’d fund me himself, but didn’t. Then another friend, Dick Matthews had heard about my plans and introduced me to Jim Anderson, a civil servant.

By that time, due to my reporting on Frank Comments and discovering the group scene, by my burgeoning interest in Elvis, Buddy Holly and all things rock ‘n’ roll and by my championing our college band (who were later to become the Beatles), I’d decided to take a chance and produce a newspaper devoted to the entire musical landscape on Merseyside.

With the £50 we took a tiny attic office for £5 a week, Virginia worked full time at £2.10/- a week and I lived on my Senior City Art Scholarship. I approached James E. James, the printer for Frank Comments and since I couldn’t afford expensive blocks to be made for photos, I borrowed blocks off the Widnes Weekly News, Pantosphinx and local cinemas (the Weekly news for the cover photo with Gene Vincent, Pantosphinx for cartoons by my art school mates which I used in adverts) and blocks of films such as ‘Spartacus’ from local cinemas.)

I then went to the three main distributors of newspapers and magazines – W.H. Smith, Conlan’s and Blackburns, who all agreed to distribute it to newsagents. I also went to 28 separate newsagents to get orders. Then I contacted all the promoters to stock it in the Cavern and other venues. Then I went to all the music stores in the city centre – Cramer & Lea, Rushworth & Draper, Cranes, Nems etc. At Nems I asked to see the manager. It was Brian Epstein. He ordered a dozen copies. He’d had no idea such a scene existed on his doorstep. He phoned me for more copies and then, for issue No. 2, in which the Beatles recording in Hamburg was the entire front page story, he ordered 144 copies. By issue 3 he was my record reviewer!

(GF)...What are the origins of your relationship with the Beatles and Stuart Sutcliffe?

(BH)...It all started at the Liverpool College of Art in Hope Street. I’d heard that there was a particularly talented new student, Stuart Sutcliffe, so I made it my business to get to know him. I didn’t like the fact that there were a lot of dilettantes at the college; I was more interested in creative people, people who had a passion. We used to drink in Ye Cracke, a nearby pub in Rice Street.

I’d also got to know another student. I’d noticed him stalking across the college canteen, dressed like a teddy boy – and I thought that he was the rebel, he was the one who was different, while most of the students sitting around in their duffle coats and sweaters were conformists. His name was John Lennon and I made it my business to know him. Stuart’s best friend was Rod Murray and when we went to the pub I introduced John to Stuart. We would go there regularly and I would also go along to the Gambier Terrace flat they shared.

One night we all went to Liverpool University to listen to a London poet Royston Ellis. When we got back to Ye Cracke we began to discuss how Ellis seemed to be aping the San Francisco poets rather that deriving his work from his own experience. We began to talk about the creative process and how an artist is best creating from his own experience and environment rather than copying something with which he has no real experience. We decided that we would all use our individual talents to create something about our own environment and experience and considered that Liverpool was a vital and interesting place, particularly the Liverpool 8 district where the college was based. We decided we would, on our own modest way, try to make Liverpool famous. John would do it with his music, Stuart and Rod with their painting and me with my writing. I suggested we call ourselves the Dissenters.

Incidentally, Royston Ellis stayed at the Gambier Terrace flat. When I was there he opened a Vick inhaler, took out the Benzedrine strip and told them that if they chewed it, it would keep them awake all night. I guess that was their first experience of drugs. They also backed Ellis at a poetry-to-rock gig at the Jacaranda. The Jacaranda is where I first met Virginia. The Beatles were playing downstairs (they weren’t called the Beatles then, this was in May 1960). Virginia and I used to drop round to Gambier Terrace regularly and would chat with John for hours. At one time Virginia missed the last bus home and John put us both up in the bath!

Before he moved into Gambier Terrace, I used to visit Stuart in his flat in Percy Street and we used to talk about mystical things, also our love of Liverpool. We decided to do a book together about Liverpool with my text and his illustrations, but we never got around to it. I had to work during vacations as the college grant wasn’t enough to live on. Stuart received financial support from his mother, so he continued to paint in his flat. I worked on a demolition site, knocking down a flour mill in Birkenhead (over the water) and with my first week’s wages, bought a blue jacket. When I dropped round to see Stu he admired my jacket and I said he could have it if he painted a portrait of me. He asked in what style I would like it. I said in the style of Van Gough. He took an afternoon to complete it, first drawing my face on pieces of pink foolscap paper.

Once he left for Germany I only saw him infrequently after that – when he visited Liverpool with Astrid and I met them at the Jacaranda. However, I always kept in touch with his mother who’d give me all the news about his exploits in Germany. She was upset when she told me he’d had an accident and had fallen down the steps from the attic in Astrid’s house which he’d used as a studio – after that, he began to get the headaches.

Millie Sutcliffe continued to phone me every month until her death many years later. I grabbed John and took him round to see her. She was thrilled and gave John and I the pick of Stuart’s work. John picked a blue abstract oil painting, I picked a red collage. She also gave John a newspaper clipping, a book on drawing horses he’d lent Stu and a couple of other things.

(GF)...What happened to the pictures of John with the toilet seat around his neck and is it true some of his writings for "Mersey Beat" were disposed of in the 60's by accident?

(BH)...John gave me a pile of photos of him and Paul taken in Hamburg, with him standing on the corner of the Reeperbahn reading a newspaper in his underpants, on stage with a toilet seat around his neck, Paul sitting on a toilet and so on. When Brian Epstein took over their management he must have heard about them because a worried John came into the office and asked if he could have the photos back. I hadn’t published them, but gave them back to John. Many years later I heard that Hunter Davies had them. Apparently they were among the numerous items – song lyrics, photos etc that he collected when writing the authorized biography. He let me use a couple of them for my book with Pete Best, ‘The Best Years of the Beatles.’

When I commissioned John to write a piece on the origins of the Beatles for me he was so pleased that he came into the office with a huge bundle of material – stories, poems, cartoons etc – I reckon there were around 250 items. He said it was everything he had ever written and I could have them to do whatever I wanted with them.

So I decided to use some of the items in a column. I gave it the tag Beatcomber, because they reminded me of the humorous writing of Beachcomber in the Daily Express newspaper. When I began printing them, John was so thrilled seeing his work in print that he’d even come into the office and pay for classified ads, written in his inimitable style.

Being innovative, Mersey Beat seemed to click straight away and in a relatively short time we were able to move from the tiny attic down to the next floor which had two larger offices. I spent most of my time out interviewing and left the move from office to office to Virginia. When it came time to prepare a new issue I opened the top drawer of my desk where I’d put all of John’s writings and drawings – and found it was empty. Somehow, during the move they’d been lost.

That evening we were down at the Blue Angel and John was there. When we told him he wept on Virginia’s shoulder.

(GF)...Is there any early Beatles show that sticks out in your mind the most?

(BH)...Well, of course, we used to book them for the art college dances. They still hadn’t settled on a name and I referred to them as the college band. Stuart and I were members of the Student’s Union and we proposed and seconded that we use student funds to buy a p.a. system which the group could use at the dances. It officially belonged to the college but they took it away and it was never returned. I think that was one of the reasons why Stuart was turned down when he applied to join an Art Teacher’s Training course. When Virginia and I went with the Beatles to their first radio gig in Manchester we traveled on a coach with them, Brian Epstein, Jim McCartney, some fans – and a member of the student’s union who had been sent to recover the p.a. system. He asked John but got a mouthful!  Epstein actually contacted Fred O’ Brien of the Student’s Union saying the Beatles would like to play at an Art School dance for old times for the nominal sum of £5 – and O’Brien turned them down because of the lost p.a. system. So I remember the art school dances and, in a side room, Stuart showed me the new bass guitar he’d got from Frank Hessy’s and I began to play it and noticed blood on my fingers – the strings were scraping away my skin.

Paul and George were next door at the Liverpool Institute, but were always hanging around our canteen and rehearsing in our college Life Rooms. I remember them rehearsing in one corner while I was playing kazoo with a skiffle group with Rod in another.

Of course, the Liverpool gig that began to establish their reputation locally was their appearance at Litherland Town Hall on 27 December 1960. I reckon it was more important than their Cavern debut.

(GF)...What's the story behind the famous "Beatles top poll" cover and do you still own a copy?

(BH)...10,000 people can now have a copy as I’m having a limited edition replica made available  Although copies have sold for as much as £2,500 at auction, the special limited edition will only cost £10.

When Virginia and I came to count the votes we were very aware that members of groups and their fans had been buying up copies, but we were also able to assess in a fair way what the votes should really be because we knew who the best bands were. Rory Storm & the Hurricanes actually topped the first count. However, we noticed a big batch of over forty votes had been written in the same hand in green ink and posted from the same area, so we scrubbed them as it was too obvious a fix. That meant that the Beatles now topped the poll.

When I came to caption the cover I thought I’d check what Paul’s correct spelling for his surname was and had a look at the Beatles biography which John Lennon had written for me. John had written: “After a few months, Peter and Paul (who is called McArtrey, son of Jim McArtrey, his father)…” So I copied out John’s spelling, which proved to be wrong. I still don’t know whether John had made a sincere mistake or whether he was taking the piss. In those days, lots of friends just knew each other by their first names.

Brian Epstein had been eagerly awaiting the results and immediately put up their booking fee and had handouts made announcing ‘Mersey Beat Poll Winners!’ He also gave me the photo I used on the cover which had been taken by the Epstein family photographer, Albert Marrion.

(GF)...How would you describe Liverpool's reaction to the sacking of Pete Best? Did the fuss calm down right away, or was there still tension there while the Beatles got more famous?

(BH)...Although there was a degree of initial fury, it died down virtually straight away at the first appearance Ringo made with them at the Cavern. Brian Epstein was terrified and had to have a bodyguard and Bruno, a friend of Pete’s, gave George Harrison a black eye. The girls were yelling ‘Pete Forever, Ringo never,’ but they settled down once the Beatles began playing and things were soon restored to normal. Yes, I did receive shoals of letters of protest at Mersey Beat, but the split had been made, the dirty deed done, and the Beatles were far too popular for it to affect them for long. Brian Epstein had wanted Pete to remain under his management and he offered to put him with the Merseybeats and Rory even wanted him to replace Ringo in the Hurricanes! Instead, Pete joined Lee Curtis & the all Stars, a relatively new group on the scene. In the second Mersey Beat poll the Beatles came first and Lee Curtis & the All Stars came second. Although Lee Curtis points out how popular his group was then – it wasn’t his group that gave them such a high position, it was the presence of Pete that placed them next to the Beatles. The group was nowhere near in a class by the Beatles and Pete soon split with Curtis and took the All Stars with him to form the Pete Best Four. Ironically, their record was produced by Mike smith of Decca, the A&R man who’d turned the Beatles down. Unfortunately, Pete didn’t have much success and abandoned the life of a musician for that of a civil servant. He received a huge boost when his recordings with the Beatles were included on the Anthology (prestige as well as cash) and is now tremendously successful internationally with his new band.

(GF)...I've read you were the publicist for the Kinks and Pink Floyd.  What's the story behind that?

(BH)...When Virginia and I moved down to London I already had a weekly music column in Weekend magazine and columns in the teen magazines Marilyn and Valentine. I also became feature writer, news editor and columnist for Record Mirror (using various names such as Brenda Tarry and David Berglas as well as my own), feature writer for Music Now and columnist (under the name Nick Blaine) for Record Retailer. So I was daily interviewing every major British or American name in London, giving the Bee Gees their first British interview, starting the first series of profiles of disc jockeys etc. Bobby Darin said my interview on him was the best he’d ever read and invited Virginia and I to stay with him at the house he rented in London.

Then I was asked to become press agent for the Kinks and the Hollies, then the Pink Floyd. Over the next sixteen years I was press agent for various artists, some famous others who didn’t make it. There was Christine Perfect, Chicken Shack, Savoy Brown, Alexis Korner, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Procol Harum, Clouds, Free, Mott the Hoople, Terry Reid, Stone The Crows, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Suzi Quatro, Nazareth, Supertramp, Liverpool Express, Our Kid, Keith Chegwin, Arrows, the Beach Boys, the Electric Prunes, the Pretty Things, Hot Chocolate, Kim Wilde, Nicky Sun, Racey, True Brit, Cockney Rebel, The Peddlers, the Four Pennies, Tam White, David Prowse (when he was Darth Vader in ‘Star Wars’) and others. I was also press agent for the ‘in’ clubs Tiles, the Speakeasy, Blaises and the Revolution club and also did separate press campaigns for all the major record companies.

Virginia and I were at the heart of the Swinging London scene then, seven nights a week at clubs and every major gig, every music festival from the Isle of Wight, Bath and Reading festivals, to all the weekly TV pop shows such as ‘Top of the Pops’ and ‘Ready Steady Go’, all the gigs such as the Marquee, Savile Theatre, Albert Hall (Derek Taylor invited us along to the Byrds first London gig and we were at all the major concerts that took place), traveling around with Led Zeppelin, going drinking with Keith Moon, seeing Jimi Hendrix at his first London appearance…just one long seven day a week trip for many years.

The club scene was very good and I had numerous chats with Judy Garland, the last time sitting at a table in the Revolution chatting with her and Veronica Lake until 3 in the morning. The Rev was mainly the place for the film stars and celebrities with Zsa Zsa Gabor, Brigitte Bardot, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, Raquel Welch and others, although there was always music ranging from the Edwin Hawkins Singers to the cast from ‘Hair.’. There were lots of interesting events. When Pattie Boyd was finally allowed to resume her modeling career she modelled for Ozzie Clark at the Rev with George and John in attendance – and Donald Pleasance stood up and gave Virginia his seat. There was the TV show filmed there with Tom Jones and the American Miss World, David Frost did the TV show of the moon landing from there and so on. The Speakeasy was mainly for the groups and there were performances from a host of major name and parties for groups such as the Monkees. John, with Yoko by his side, used to give Virginia and me regular lifts in his car from the Speak to the Bag O’ Nails. The Bag was another regular and we were sitting there one night with Paul on the next table. He told Virginia he’d just got back from Liverpool where he’d been at Rory Storm’s house and noticed a photograph of her there. Then Chas Chandler came by and introduced Paul to Linda. While at the Scotch of St James one night with the Beatles and the Stones, I noticed Marlon Brando sitting there and I began chatting with James Baldwin. At the Playboy club I used to sit talking to Telly Savalas while he was at the gaming table. He invited me to the studios to watch him filming, but I never went. At Blaises, Jimi Hendrix began to make his first appearances. We were present at Jimi’s very first appearance for the press in London. When he began to play the guitar with his teeth, the editor of Record Mirror near had apoplexy! We’d go to Jimi’s flat and play board games with him and he and the other members of the group used to smoke pot, which always made me doze off – and I’d wake up to find they’d all gone to a late night movie!

There were so many memories like that, but London was actually amazing then and we all thought that we had the ability to do anything and that the world was going to get better and better and there’d be peace, love, excitement and creativity – that all came cradhing down with the arab-israeli war and the huger increased in oil prices in the 1970s that has lived with us ever since.

Frankly, I did as much in London during the Swinging London years as I did in Liverpool during the Mersey sound era. In the Seventies I was also part of the Glam Rock movement when I was press officer for Suzi Quatro.

The last artist I represented was Kim Wilde, then I got fed up of P.R. and launched a monthly glossy magazine on the latest album releases called Tracks. Towards the end of the Eighties I launched another magazine Idols: 20^th Century Legends. Then I went into writing books and now I’m going to move into the internet.