The Living Years Read Online Free PDF Page A

though we didn’t win, I was thoroughly enjoying it.
    * * *
    Sundays were the real highlight of my time at The Leas, though: lunch out with my parents followed by
Pick of the Pops
.
    Leaving prep school on a Sunday always felt like getting out of prison: outside the colours looked brighter, the air smelled better . . . plus you got roast beef. My mother and father would arrive early in the morning to come to chapel – Dad in his cavalry twills, erect and composed, Mum waving and coo-eeing enthusiastically. Then we’d all drive into Hoylake and have lunch at a hotel. After that, Dad would patiently settle down with
The Times
and I would huddle up to the radio in the sitting area, still in my grey school shorts and blue cap, jostling for position with any other Leas boys who might be there too.
    It’s hard to explain what an event
Pick of the Pops
was back then. Now, you can listen to anything you want at any time you want; there’s music in every single restaurant, every shop, every airport, every lift. In 1963 pop music was limited to three hours on a Sunday afternoon and the sense of anticipation was amazing. You would be counting the days until a Beatles album was released and when Alan Freeman finally played ‘She Loves You’ or ‘Please, Please Me’ the buzz would be tremendous – I can still feel it now. (The guitar riff from ‘You’ve Really Got Me’ by the Kinks was the same. Nothing that great has ever dated.) It was a blank canvas, pop music. There were no precedents so everything was new and unique and exciting and I loved it all: the Who, the Stones, the Small Faces, Joan Baez, Arthur Brown . . . although my first hero was, without question, Cliff Richard.
    It was my sister Nicky who got me into Cliff.
    My parents weren’t really musical although my father loved theatre and musical hall. At home I would often see him watching
The Good Old Days
with Leonard Sachs and pretending to conduct along to the songs. But they didn’t own any records (having moved around so much while Dad was in the Navy, they didn’t have many possessions generally), so the gramophone in our house was in Nicky’s bedroom. Which always bugged me.
    Nicky mainly listened to Tommy Steele and Elvis – ballad Elvis – which didn’t get me going. It was only when I heard ‘Move It’ by Cliff and the Shadows – that wild, guitar-based sound – that I got a real body-charge of excitement. And then there was Cliff himself: his sharp suits, his quiffed-back hair, his moves . . . with that raw sound as well, he had it all.
    My first gig, which I persuaded my parents to take me to, was Cliff and the Shadows at the Apollo in Manchester. A few days before, I would manage to buy some Brylcreem and just as we were getting ready to leave I greased my hair into some sort of quiff so that I could look as cool as Cliff did. My mother didn’t think I looked very cool at all, marched me upstairs and stuck my head under the tap.
    Funnily enough, it didn’t dampen the experience. Cliff was wearing a white jacket and black shirt and was as good as I’d hoped, although the idea that I could do what he was doing never occurred to me: he was so grown up and beyond my world.
    As well as the sound, it was the shape of the guitar that appealed to me. I’d seen pictures of a red Hofner with double cutaways and I liked the symmetry of it. This meant that my first guitar – a cheap nylon-stringed acoustic – was a bit of a disappointment. As was Bert Weedon’s manual
Play in a Day
, mainly because that was what I was expecting to do. And I didn’t. The book had a picture of Bert on the cover wearing a suit and holding a jazz guitar but by page three he’d lost me.
    I wasn’t entirely put off: I could still practise posturing with a record on. At Far Hills there weren’t any mirrors that worked properly. Nicky had a dressing table mirror that angled but if I wanted it to stay where it got me looking good, I had to wedge it into position with a