I Was An East End Boy

When I was 12 or 13 we were living in Stepney, my mum would take me to the local tailor, because she loved dressing me up. My dad was a tailor too. I was hanging around youth clubs such as The Brady Street Club and the Stepney Green Club. The Mod thing hadn’t happened at the time, it was all the Shadows type shit As a kid when all the Rock & Roll stuff was happening, I really got into Little Richard and Fats Domino, it was always black music that appealed to me. Good Rock and Roll was phenomenal. At 15 my mum got me a job at The Mayfair Hotel as a pageboy, and that is when I started exploring the West End after work, it was then that I discovered two clubs La Discotheque and The Flamingo. I believe they were the first two clubs that I went to , then I started frequenting The Marquee. It was at these places I first saw the visiting American GI’s looking really sharp in that Ivy League look, button down shirts and Blue Beat hats. They also brought the music with them, and I started getting into the R&B and Jazz that I heard down The Flamingo. These places were packed with these black guys, American Africans and the West Indian guys, you know, Jamaicans like Eddie Tan Tan.

My first job was working at the Mayfair Hotel in the West End of London as a Pageboy.  After work I would walk to Piccadilly and then into Soho.  It was there that I fell across La Discotheque and the Flamingo club on Wardour St, the Marquee was also around then.  I was aged around 15/16 when I started to go the clubs regularly.  My typical week was that I was out every night, it was boring being at home.  I would finish work and go straight out the West End.  I then got my own place near Baker St and shared with my friends.

The Scene

I met Ronan O'Rahilly at La Disc or the Flamingo, I can’t remember which one exactly and we became good friends, we just clicked and we got on really well.  Giorgio Gomelsky had rented the venue the Cy Laurie Piccadilly Club in Ham Yard. He was able to secure a Saturday night for a fee of £5 and proceeded to stage the first festival of British Blues. Bands appearing included Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, Blues By Six (which included Nicky Hopkins), and the Rolling Stones. Ronan had wanted to start his own club, he took over the venue in 62ish and renamed it The Scene club.  The club opened every night of the week and I then started working with Ronan at the Scene club"finding bands etc and Radio Caroline at the very begining we made the tapes showes in London studio in feeter lane above queen magazine offices Ronan gave me a position at Radio Caroline in Programme planning. I would organise the play lists for the shows.  My music influences were Radio Luxembourg and America Today.  America Today was a great show as it was playing all the black music.  Sandra was the DJ at the Scene and she was into dating spades so she was influenced by the music they brought with them.  The music that was played at the Scene club was totally different from any other clubs, it was black influenced and the kids loved it. 

Guy Stevens would come in on a monday we recruited him to put on a weekly “R&B disc night” at the Scene Club, 

There was another club we used to go to after the Scene shut and that was the Roaring Twenties.  The club was popular with spades and it played ska music 

There was always drugs on the mod scene, everyone was blocked all the time and had their favourite dealer.‘Phil the Greek’ :)The police raided the club two or three times.  We always knew when there was going to a raid so we were expecting it.  It was more of a photo opportunity for the Government to try and make a statement to the kids to behave yourselves.  When the police raided the club they would come in and put their flash lights on. They would line everyone up against the wall, then when everyone moved back to the middle, it was hilarious, as there were piles of pill packets all over the floor, the police would say ‘whose is this!’, ‘who dropped this!’ it was so funny.  We knew they were coming though as we were tipped off.  They eventually closed the club down.  It was great times though, we were young on good money and had good jobs. 

This may suprise some

We never rode scooters, that pic of me on a scooter outside the Scene club was not my scooter, I had a mini cooper.  Only the tickets had scooters and it was later on around 64 that scooters started.  In 1960 – 63 they were not a big thing.  The term ‘Face’ came from us saying ‘who?, whatisface?’.  Peter Meaden would have come up with the expression ‘Face’ for the newspapers.  Pete would get drunk on cider and pills, it was a real shame how things ended for him.

My favourite bands and the best ones were the Animals and The Who.  Eric’s voice was amazing, there’s a photo of me at the Scene in front of Eric, I’m just mesmerised by his voice.   

I’m still friends with Pete Townsend and we email   The Who were not a mod band.  It was 1961 to 65 that were the mod years.  We never thought of a band as being ‘mod’ the bands were just good bands playing good music.  The term ‘modernist’ was created by the newspapers when things had started to go commercial.