1966-1976: The Love Affair The People's History of Pop

-He's smashing!

-I kissed him! I kissed his hand!

-I kissed his hand!

-I kissed his hand!

I went, "Oh!"

Pop music. It's illuminated our lives and made the world a better place.

This is its story, told by those of us who love it the most.

The fans.

Fans from all over the country have been digging out and sharing with us

some of their most treasured, rare and unlikely memorabilia.

Their first record, a favourite ticket, a drumstick!

All precious and all with a wonderful story.

It's a way of life. It really was. Northern Soul was a way of life.

When punk came along, it changed the way I thought about everything.

I wanted a bit more bite to it.

And The Smiths gave me that - and then some.

So, whether you're a fan of psychedelia or heavy metal,

glam or prog rock,

punk, reggae, acid house or hip-hop - and I like them all -

this is about us,

the people who devoured this thing called pop and saw it change who we

were and the world we lived in.

Tonight, we're in the era when things got a little more heated.

And where two extraordinary friends changed everything.

The age of giddy innocence was well and truly over.

Now, it was no longer enough to flirt with pop music,

we wanted to get serious.

For younger people, it just felt like it was exploding.

You didn't have to comform to what your parents did.

Nobody had ever seen anything like him before.

I didn't have a life before David Bowie!

So, let's talk about what we believed in.

What we looked like.

How we boogalooed.

And who we could be.

This programme contains some strong language.

MUSIC: I Feel Free by Cream

Now, everyone likes to fight their corner about what era was the best to be a pop fan.

But I'm afraid, my friends, I win this battle hands down.

The fact is, the golden years were during my youth.

Look at it. All this magnificent music, all these styles, genres,

all of this invention. And yet the fact is,

if it hadn't been for what happened to pop music between 1966 and 1976,

none of this would exist.

And more importantly, neither would the effect it had on millions of

lives, changing them forever.

To be a fan of music in this period was to wake up every morning,

throw back the covers and think, "What now?"

But if you were a fan waking up one August morning in 1966,

the news wasn't good.

The biggest band in the world were exiting the stage.

Having grown tired of their life as a teenage fan's pin-up,

the Beatles had played their last gig.

Retreating to the studio, they no longer wanted to hold our hands,

they wanted to expand our minds.

With the screaming of the Beatlemania years fading,

Jo Edkins was now searching for the music's hidden meaning.

And for nearly 50 years,

she's kept her precious copy of the album

that introduced her to their new sound.

This is the album.

Sergeant Pepper. And, well, a very famous album, this montage...

This is interesting, because I remember this as having far more people in it.

I know we used to look through it,

trying to work out who we could recognise and...

There's Dylan up there, for example.

I mean, it didn't look like any other album LP cover at the time.

And it was funny, because those were the early Beatles,

that's what they looked like then, all miserable, grumpy.

This is what we look like now. Bright and cheerful!

MUSIC: Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite by The Beatles

Sergeant Pepper was about more than just the music.

For fans, it was a gift full of pop art,

bright colours and this essential set of cardboard cut-outs.

There was a postcard and those were a couple of stripes to put on your

shoulder, to make you a sergeant.

And that was a cut-out moustache that would hook into your nose.

I don't know anybody who ever cut anything out of this.

It was also the first album to print the songs' lyrics on its sleeve.

Words and music had equal billing.

It was as if the Beatles had something to say to us.

My favourite track was Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

It sounded like poetry to me.

I didn't like real poetry, I mean...

Wordsworth's "Daffodils"...

What's that about?

You're on a boat on the river.

I imagine it's a punt, since I live in Cambridge.

Meeting somebody, very attractive, or possibly somebody they love.

"Picture yourself on a boat in the river,

"with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

"Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly...

"..the girl with kaleidoscope eyes."

It seemed to be using interesting imagery.

It seems to have words you couldn't quite understand,

but you felt that they meant something.

And that's what I thought poetry was then.

MUSIC: Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles

With their abstract lyrics and sonic textures,

the Beatles were tapping into the sound of the times.

Psychedelia.

Here, sounds and ideas were getting wilder and looser.

This was a new movement, rejecting tradition,

embracing a new way of life and looking at the world in a very different way.

These music fans were on a different planet

to the teenyboppers of yesterday.

And it was the Beatles' music of this period that whetted

Don Letts's appetite.

The Beatles came to me at a point in my life when I was trying to find

my own identity through the music I consumed

or the clothes I was wearing.

Indeed, Don became so obsessed, he started to amass one of

the largest collections of Beatles memorabilia in the country.

Not all of it official releases.

I think the Beatles are really, you know,

one of the first bands to kind of be bootlegged so much.

I mean, this is a small selection, I've got about 100.

Yeah, these coloured vinyls.

I remember these. That little thing on there, trademark of quality,

this pig, meant they were good-quality bootlegs.

The early incarnation of the Beatles, you know,

with the short collars and the mop tops and the

"Ooh" and the Jelly Baby thing.

That's not my favourite period.

When they got really interesting is when they started taking the drugs.

And they could be musicians and be who they wanted to be.

So beards and kaftans start happening.

Not the greatest style, but the music started to get really interesting.

And they just kind of captured the mood...

I was going to say of the country, but of the whole world.

For young people, it just felt like it was exploding.

For some of us, this was also the year of protest and uprisings,

from Paris to Prague and Vietnam.

And the heartbeat of these changing times was our pop music.

With the right sounds, fans could bathe their ears, free their minds,

change their look and reshape the world.

Well, that was the idea.

Our pop music would be the soundtrack.

Its lyrics, the manifesto.

Philosophy can be sometimes one word, and that is love.

All you need is love.

MUSIC: Glimpses by The Yardbirds

Hand-in-hand with this movement was an exciting new way

for fans to really get into the music.

Out in the open!

One of the biggest things to emerge from the scene was the birth of

the open-air festival.

By the late '60s, there were any amount of free festivals taking place

where bands were playing in front of packed fields full of mud-caked,

wildly dressed or naked hippies,

all of them freaking out to the now sounds.

Because a lot of them were stoned.

And if you were a farmer with a few acres and a relaxed attitude,

it wouldn't be long before an enterprising hippie got in touch,

stuck up a stage and invited...

..everyone.

And that's what happened here on the sleepy Isle of Wight in 1970,

as one of the epoch-defining music festivals came to this field.

And the teenage Roger Simmonds was along for the trip.

This is right where I stood.

About 46 years ago.

The stage was over there...

..on that little bit of a hillock there,

so pointing slightly towards the hill.

You can see the backdrop there, Tennyson Down, and the Monument,

and they could see that above the stage.

And this is the stage area here.

Pretty much looking back to where I am at the moment.

-ARCHIVE:

-Here come the hippies, the advance guard

of an invasion force flooding into the Isle of Wight

today for the music festival.

An island four miles off the coast of Hampshire and 40 years behind

the times, the Isle of Wight was full of tradition,

suspicion and retired locals.

So when 600,000 music fans, six times the island's population,

turned up for the biggest musical gathering the world had ever seen,

the islanders said, "Come on in, kids!

"Have a good time!"

Oh, no, hang on...

The island cannot cope with the quantity of people.

Kids running about naked,

fucking in the bushes

and doing every damn thing

that they feel inclined to do.

But not everyone got so lucky in the bushes.

Most were there for only one thing.

The music.

When the festival line-up was announced,

featuring some of the biggest acts of the time,

it was too much for Brian Hinton to miss.

His programme is a memento of an event that really blew his mind.

This is the programme.

Absolute work of art.

You have the mandala.

So, the idea of Eastern mysticism is coming in.

Flowers flowering in a very extraordinary way.

It's a very beneficent, pot-soaked sort of 1970 world.

And then, when I saw the list of bands, I thought,

"They CAN'T have Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, The Doors..."

You know, Hendrix hadn't really played the UK for years.

You know, these were really big names.

If I miss this, I'm mad, because this has got, you know,

all the people that you would never see in the UK.

And there was a buzz about it.

Everyone at school saying, "Are you going to the Isle of Wight?"

I hadn't really been away from home before, other from Boy Scout camps!

And suddenly, there I am,

by myself among half a million people in this huge arena,

or this huge space.

And there was a truck outside

on which naked men were playing rock music,

part of Hawkwind.

And I thought, "Well, this is different."

You know? I have come to a different place.

Yeah, it was a wonderful...

Well, it was the best weekend of my life.

Yeah. So far!

Dubbed Britain's Woodstock,

music fans stayed on the island for five days.

Roger never really left.

Well, welcome to my festival room.

This is my little shrine.

Representative of the Isle of Wight festivals.

I've got the collage of tickets there.

That's a weekend ticket, which of course I had,

but there were day tickets as well.

A poster for the event.

And I can remember walking back with my friend John

that I went with and I said to him as we left the festival site,

I thought, "Do you know what, we've had such a great time here," I said,

"I wouldn't mind living here one day."

And I did.

This was more than just a music festival.

It was over half a million people

showing it was possible to live another way of life.

The underground press came along.

They would do daily bulletins for the people.

In a way, this is the internet.

This is the internet in 1970.

It was a free news sheet that was given out.

Thousands of copies of these were distributed.

By the nature of things, only a few now exist,

because most people threw them away.

They probably used them for loo paper, because there wasn't any there.

And it's got things like, "Ken Coughin meet Gary at One Stop Records.

"Phillip Jakeman meet John at main gate with asthma inhaler."

"Caroline says please go to Canvas City immediately,

"as your friend Linda has been busted."

Now very valuable, they're very collectable.

It's the counterculture in action.

MUSIC: Naked Eye by The Who

Music fans were treated to one of the greatest gatherings of bands in this or any era.

From a standout performance by The Who...

And in the early hours of Sunday morning,

resplendent in bright orange,

came Jimi Hendrix in what would be his last British gig before

his shocking death three weeks later.

# Well, I stand up next to a mountain

# And I chop it down with the edge of my hand... #

But it was The Doors who were Roger's festival highlight,

a band that embodied the counterculture movement.

I guess The Doors, I can hear...

I can hear Jim Morrison.

I certainly hear Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek playing that organ.

And that set that they delivered, it was...

it was almost sinister.

# Come on, baby... #

As a teenager, I was possibly a little bit reserved.

Not shy so much, but reserved.

And I think just being with like-minded people and realising that you didn't

have to conform to what your parents did and what they said

you should be doing.

It stuck with me. And I think also I became a bit more,

perhaps a bit more gregarious, a bit more outward.

And I think that helped me through life in general, really.

Roger didn't leave an important part of his brain somewhere in a field

on the Isle of Wight -

he found a new way to express his personality.

But peace and happiness,

bright clothes and love wasn't for all music fans.

There were some who wanted their music with a whiff of sulphur

and a rumble of thunder.

Here's something. Back in the early '70s,

the majority of people in Britain

still considered themselves Christian.

And quite a lot of them still went to church on a Sunday.

So when young music fans started to embrace the darker side, well,

that was considered diabolical.

This new, sombre sonic experience was comprised in equal parts of

the devil and his demons,

disease, doom, death.

And Birmingham.

MUSIC: Sleeping Village by Black Sabbath

It was the city's dark, Satanic steel mills filled with grinding,

thumping machinery that gave this new music a distinctive sound.

And for local lad Graham Bentley, it was just what he was looking for.

This is it. This is the place where everything's kept, the archive room.

Yeah, this is my vinyl over here.

It wasn't called heavy music then.

It was sort of called aggro music, or aggressive music, or meaty music.

There's one band called Hard Meat.

They played at the Badge Club in Northampton.

And so did a band called Earth, who I really wanted to see,

because I'd seen all the other meaty, aggressive bands,

I hadn't seen Earth.

So I went down to the Badge Club.

I was really disappointed,

because I went in there and the drum kit said Black Sabbath.

I thought, is it some sort of religious band or something?

Sabbath? Anyway, we were sitting on the floor,

it was only about 30 people in there.

Four dark-clad blokes came out,

took the lights out of the ceiling with handkerchiefs,

threw them behind the drum kit and then...

You know, that first Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath.

MUSIC: Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath

Went out and got this as soon as it came out.

Black Sabbath, first gatefold sleeve album I'd ever had.

And it's just unbelievable stuff.

What I liked about this album as well,

was when you put that on your turntable...

..if you can see what it's doing there.

That's psychedelic in itself, isn't it?

Heavy-metal psychedelia.

They're from Birmingham, and I was born in Birmingham.

And I just thought,

they've done this music for me.

And those sort of chords, that sort of distinct distortion

that they get, it just hits you. You know, right in here.

And it's fantastic.

# Please believe me, my love, and I'll show you

# I will give you... #

For the teenage Graham, on the cusp of adulthood,

that was a transformative experience.

So that's when I was 18.

That was when I was 20.

See, I'd grown my hair quite long.

I think that's because of Black Sabbath!

Black Sabbath. That is Black Sabbath, isn't it, really?

I loved Sabbath, too.

Really loved them. In fact,

my obsession with music got very serious in the early '70s.

Every day, I was bombarded with new sounds, new fashions,

new challenging ideas.

This was my time.

Music felt like it really mattered.

As did how you looked!

I got some of my more outre sartorial choices

from a movement started by a young man in Stamford Hill.

MUSIC: 20th Century Boy by T.Rex

Mark Feld.

When Mark wore some glitter,

added a feather boa and changed his name to Bolan, Glam was born.

And for Britain in the early '70s,

this meant style was like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.

My dream was to meet him.

I wasn't alone in that. But in 1973, this dream came true,

when he wandered into the record shop where I'd just started work.

In he came, Marc Bolan.

Afghan coat, orange loonpants.

Purple Anello & Davide shoes.

But it was the shirt he was wearing, I thought, "That's a star's shirt."

It was silk and had Chuck Berry doing the duck walk all over in different colours.

Like an Andy Warhol print.

Anyway, he sorted out a few records and I thought, what am I going to say to Marc Bolan?

Going to have to talk to Marc Bolan.

He was invited behind the counter to have a cup of tea with his friend, the manager.

As he passed me, I thought, I've got to say something. So like that kid in the Simpsons, I went,

"Mr Bolan, that shirt you're wearing is the greatest shirt I've ever seen."

"Oh, you like the shirt, do you? It's great, I got it at Spencer's in New York.

"Do you know Spencer's?" I barely knew New York!

No, I didn't. I was 15!

Anyway, he went off to use the toilet.

When he came out, he had a little bag of records with him and he had the Afghan coat

and he had the orange loonpants and the purple Anello & Davide shoes.

Didn't have the shirt on. He had it in his hand rolled up in a ball. "Here you go, it's yours," he said.

Now that, my friends, is a star.

He gave me his shirt.

And I didn't leave it off, and I'm not joking, for about three weeks.

Everywhere I went.

And not only that, I would say to people, "Ask me about this shirt. Ask me where I got this shirt!"

"Where did you get that shirt?" "Marc Bolan gave it to me!"

# Get it on

# Bang a gong

# Get it on... #

So, what happened to that precious shirt?

Well, my mum took a cavalier attitude to the words "dry-clean only".

And she shrunk it. "How could you, it was so precious!" I said.

"Oh, yeah," she said.

"What was it doing on your bedroom floor, then?"

If only my mum had been more like Ruth Chambers' mum.

She kept Ruth's childhood bedroom like a pop time capsule.

This is my bedroom from when I was in my teens.

And these cupboards are still here, just as I left them, really.

These pictures would have been from the Musical Express,

or possibly Jackie comic.

And I obviously thought a lot of them,

because they're all behind plastic.

And it looks as good today as it did when I put it there.

But there's another one of T. Rex up here.

I think this was a little bit later when they got slightly more make-up.

# La la la la-la la-la... # Come on!

The first concert that I went to, I was 15.

I think the whole experience of the first concert was so overwhelming,

with hundreds of screaming fans.

I was joining in, you just got caught up in it.

# La la la la-la la-la... #

What was particularly exciting, I went with some people from school.

And when it got to the end of the concert, Phil Legend, the drummer,

threw some things out.

And I heard something land on the floor.

I didn't know what was, but I thought it might be something important.

So I just bent down quickly, picked it up and put it straight in my coat.

And it wasn't till we got on the Tube, on the Underground,

that I did get this thing out of my...

Under my coat. And so what it was, was that.

I said, "Oh, I've got a drumstick!"

He was different. I think that was a big part of it.

It was an awareness that there is another world out there,

and it's all very exciting and it was OK to be individual and express

yourself, and not try and be the same.

Actually, try and be different.

Yeah!

# Well you can bump and grind

# And it's good for your mind

# Well you can twist and shout... #

Marc Bolan's liberating look and music

had a lasting effect on a young teenager called Danielz.

His fandom started off innocently enough,

with singles and T. Rex concerts.

But became something rather more intense.

Danielz, remind me again who it is you're a massive fan of.

Well, Frank Zappa.

-Marc Bolan, actually.

-Why?

How did it happen?

Well, it was a song called Jeepster.

That was the first song that I actually heard that affected me.

Obviously, I'd heard Hot Love and Ride A White Swan.

But that song, it did something to me.

From that moment on, I never looked back.

You say it did something.

-What?

-Like a lot of kids, I was really into football.

Then, I didn't want to play football any more all of a sudden.

I wanted to get a guitar, learn how to play like Marc Bolan.

And then when I saw a photograph of him, his image blew me away.

People of the older generation at that time were saying, is it a man?

Is it a woman? And of course, I loved all that,

because he looked different from anyone else.

Certainly, there's been change in England in two years.

And we are part of the change.

I mean, guys now can wear make-up, they can shout and scream.

And then, you know, as the fandom and obsession grew,

you actually went along and sought him out?

And you gave him a bit of that and tried to get him.

This woman said, "I know Marc Bolan's mum!"

So, anyway, I got the address, I went round there.

I must've been, what, 16, 17 at the time.

And I said, ridiculously, "Is Marc in?"

It was like, is he coming out to play?

Ridiculous thing to say. I didn't know what else to say.

Is Marc in? And his dad, Simeon Feld, said, "No,

"Mark's actually touring in America at the time."

He had his white... the Rolls-Royce was outside in the council estate, parked there.

-Marc Bolan's Rolls-Royce?

-Yeah, it was parked there.

-On the council estate?

-Yeah, it was the only car there.

And I said, "Well, that's obviously Marc's car."

And he says, "Do you want to go and sit in it?"

And I said, "Yeah, great, great."

So I've got the keys, obviously.

He took me out, opened the door, I sat in it.

And he also said, "I've got a pair of his shoes.

"You can have those if you want!"

So, I thought it was going to be, you know, the stage shoes.

But it wasn't, it was these training shoes.

-Well, let's have a look, you've got them here.

-And I've got them here, yeah.

-Let's see.

-Do you know, for years, I kept them.

This was from 1974.

I thought, well, they're not the sort of thing that Marc would wear... Yeah, they've got an M.

Have you ever put your nose in there and inhaled?

No! What kind of fan are you? What kind of fan are you?

That's getting a bit weird, you know!

I'm a heartbeat away from doing it now!

Be my guest! If it might have 1974...

Very rich.

Ah, man! That's the essence of the man!

Marc Bolan was the first British pop star to openly flirt with the idea of sexual ambiguity.

And what he started inspired a competitive friend of his to take

to outrageous new levels.

MUSIC: All The Young Dudes by David Bowie

The impact David Bowie had back then cannot be overstated.

His appearance shocked the older generation.

But the kids... Well, we loved it!

This is where I keep my David Bowie autograph,

that we got in Slough College.

Just milling about after the concert.

Um... There's David Bowie, signing autographs.

It says "For", and then a question mark.

Probably because I didn't say who it should be dedicated for.

"Love, Bowie."

For fans John Meech and his wife, Rose,

it was David Bowie who was their matchmaker.

Ziggy Stardust was the first album that I bought.

And it was just amazing.

And then, I mean, we weren't actually together at the time.

But I remember we went, Friday lunchtimes from work,

go to the local pub for a drink.

And John sat there and he was saying, "Well,

"I've managed to get some tickets for David Bowie.

"Would anyone like one?"

And I can remember now, nobody else is going to have that ticket!

And literally, flying across the pub table to grab it out of your hand,

-almost, didn't I?

-Pretty much, yes.

And so, that is my ticket.

That's the one I flew across the table and grabbed.

It was the first time that we both saw David Bowie together.

May 1973, which was our first date, actually.

Which is, you know, reasonable first date.

I can't complain! And this year we're celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary.

So, I think we can thank David Bowie for that, can't we?

When we got there, I mean, there were so many people.

It was serious dressing up.

-Yes.

-You realised then that this really is a phenomenon.

Yeah, you did get the impression it was the start of something big.

A lot of glam, I suppose you'd call it.

It was very dark in there.

And for the number of people there, it was also quite quiet.

Because everybody was just waiting.

Then they played the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

And then, suddenly, the lights went up and there he was.

Walked in straight into the first song.

It was so different.

You know, like, just a lightning bolt.

# She wants my honey not my money she's a funky-thigh collector

# Laying on electric dreams

# Come on, come on

# We've really got a good thing going

# Come on, come on

# If you think you're gonna make it

# You better hang on to yourself... #

I think it did change the fashion world in a way.

Because everybody, you know, people started dressing like him.

You cut my hair in that Ziggy Stardust look.

That's it, isn't it?

That's the one!

Didn't turn out quite like I expected!

It wasn't a great success, was it?

We're halfway there.

It's the same length.

MUSIC: The Jean Genie by David Bowie

Most of the reasons that I do what I do

-is because I just like startling people.

-Startling?

Yeah. Something to do.

Under the bed at the end of this corridor

is Linda Saunders' teenage Ziggy Stardust companion.

This is my very precious scrapbook.

I didn't have a life before David Bowie!

In the early '70s,

Linda was a teenager living in the little village of Willows Green,

near Chelmsford, when a lightning bolt struck.

I mean, I grew up in a tiny little village, nothing ever happened.

I think the most exciting thing

was the ice cream coming round on a Thursday.

Nobody had ever seen anything like him before.

And he was just a bright, shining light amongst all the grey, really!

He just brought a bit of excitement.

I kissed his hand!

I kissed his hand!

I kissed his hand, I kissed him!

-Oh, he's lovely!

-I've been waiting to see him for ages.

-He's fantastic!

-Oh, don't worry.

I just fell in love with him!

I was very shy as a teenager, and I did sort of feel different at times.

And I wanted to be different, but in a positive way.

And he just made that OK.

And then, one night in 1973,

Linda finally got to see her hero in the flesh.

That's the ticket.

And that's the photo of what I wore on the day,

which you can barely see.

It's so old and faded!

My dad photographed that in the garden.

It was called a Miss Mouse dress.

I got it from Topshop in London.

And big Sacha platform, pink metallic shoes.

But I wrote on the back, that that's going to see David Bowie

at Hammersmith in 1973.

But for these fans, waiting outside the venue to see Ziggy Stardust,

the concert was a bittersweet affair.

For this was when David Bowie killed off his stage alter ego.

Of all the shows on this tour,

this particular show will remain with us the longest.

Because...

CHEERING

..not only is it the last show of the tour,

but it's the last show that we'll ever do.

Thank you.

You just think, that's it!

You know, you finally got to see him and now it's the end.

It was just...

Just couldn't take it in, it was awful.

You know, we just sat on the Tube coming home and just didn't speak.

It's hard to explain, but everybody, I think,

that did like him, had a sort of personal thing.

It wasn't... Even though he was shared with millions of people,

it wasn't...

You know, that relationship you had was special to you.

And that's what I felt from the very beginning.

And up until the day he died.

In killing off Ziggy Stardust,

David Bowie had finally achieved the kind of success

he'd dreamt about for so long.

A success that hadn't been overnight.

# Ground control to Major Tom

# Ground control to Major Tom... #

Space Oddity, a hit four years previously,

and the song that first announced Bowie to the world.

It's a song that pretty much everyone knows well.

# Ground control to Major Tom... #

But there is an earlier version.

A demo that's never been released.

Going now to see a fellow who's got the most exhaustive

and valuable David Bowie collection in the world.

I suppose he started it by impressing his friends and now,

it would impress the planet.

But where do you keep stuff like this? It's all right for King Tut,

he had a pyramid! This fellow, though, has got a great idea.

He keeps all this trove in a cunningly disguised suburban house.

# This is ground control to Major Tom

# You've really made the grade... #

I've been around pop memorabilia a long time.

I've never seen anything as rare and precious as this.

-Tell us what this is.

-Yes.

It's rather special, Danny.

This is David's copy of the original Space Oddity, recorded in '68.

Wasn't released until July '69, of course.

But that's not the released one, is it?

This is completely unique in that no other copies around.

Just David, by himself, doing everything.

Stylophone and the guitar and all the voices.

-No-one was ever supposed to own that or hear it outside of Bowie and his manager.

-That's it, really.

I mean, it was literally a work in progress.

And of course, it has some different words, different phrasings,

bits are missing. Bits added in.

It's unique.

Can we hear a little bit? I know you can't... There's all kinds of strictures on it.

We're allowed to play a little bit of it.

MUSIC PLAYS

# Ground control to Major Tom

# Ground control to Major Tom

# Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

-# Ground control to Major Tom

-Ten, nine, eight

-# Commencing countdown, engines on

-Seven, six, five

# Four, three, two

# Check ignition and may God's love be with you... #

Blast off!

SUSTAINED CHORDS

MUSIC STOPS

I'm so glad they lost that, "blast off!"

Yeah!

Apart from the extraordinary experience of hearing it,

all the changes he made were better. And it just... It's got so much of, in that version of it, so mannered.

And a lot of stylophone.

Yeah. Stylophone, I mean, Bolan had just given it to him.

And he thought, perfect!

Did Bolan give him the stylophone?

-Yeah.

-Did he?

-Yeah, yeah.

Bolan said, "You might like this."

And he must've thought that was going to begin an unbroken run of success. But of course...

Of course, when it became a success in late '69, then,

you know...

Yeah. You know, it was like, finally!

Somebody's listening to me, people are...

I'm here, you know, I'm David Bowie.

-I've been around for a while, but you know, now you've caught up with me.

-Take that, Tyrannosaurus Rex!

Take that!

By the mid-1970s, David Bowie was a household name across Britain.

But there was another global superstar who was starting to emerge here.

One that a growing number of the British population would soon claim as their own.

Reggae music itself wasn't new to the charts,

but there had never been anything like Bob Marley & The Wailers.

MUSIC: Concrete Jungle by Bob Marley & The Wailers

# No sun will shine in my day today

# No sun will shine... #

And for ten-year-old Tennyson Goulbourne,

growing up in South London in 1973,

this was the pop star he'd been waiting for.

# I said darkness, darkness... #

This is, I think, my first album.

Yeah, Catch A Fire.

Bob Marley & The Wailers.

Sister took me down to Woolworths to buy this one!

This is the original one.

Comes as a lighter.

And my favourite track used to be Stir It Up.

MUSIC: Stir It Up by Bob Marley & The Wailers

You must know this one!

Bob Marley,

he was one of the first Rastas...

..that used to come on television.

# Stir it up

# Little darling

# Stir it up

# Come on, baby

# Stir it up... #

He came to my school.

In my school, we had pictures of him up on the wall.

And back in those days,

it was a rarity to see black people with pictures up on the school wall,

or anywhere.

# ..since I've got you on my mind... #

Obviously, it put a smile on my face,

because this was our first signs of having a role model

inspiring to anyone black.

It was here, Tiny T's school, Peckham Manor,

where the photos of Bob Marley hung.

And it was all because of one magical lunchtime in 1972,

when Bob and Johnny Nash came to perform live to the schoolboys in this gym.

Wow!

This is much bigger than I thought it was.

'Arts teacher Keith Baugh and schoolboy George Dyer witnessed this

'once-in-a-lifetime event.'

I can't believe, George, it was 44 years ago that we...

We had that special performance.

Do you remember it?

Well, yeah.

Keith organised the gig,

and took some rare photos of Bob Marley's extraordinary school concert.

Here's a great one.

You can see a few of the students here.

-And you may recognise some of them!

-Yeah, I do!

I'd arranged a small, makeshift stage,

about 200 or 300 chairs.

And it was absolutely fantastic.

These guys are so professional, they're so relaxed.

You know, it was something really special.

This is just another shot.

You can just see the passion that those two guys are putting into the performance.

As soon as we saw Bob and Johnny,

there was a great outburst of applause.

You know, we were going...

Give it the big large one, you know.

They felt wanted, you know.

Well, I can hear Johnny singing I Can See Clearly Now.

# I can see clearly now the rain has gone... #

The head of the school came in during that performance.

And Johnny's vocal was filling this hall,

and the head whispered in my ear,

"That guy's got a voice like an angel."

Oh, it was brilliant.

-# It's gonna be a bright

-Bright

# Bright sunshiny day... #

When we came out of the sports hall, heading back to the car,

of course Bob saw these students playing football here.

And his first instinct was to go and join in.

And of course, they passed the ball to him and the first thing he did,

with a guitar in one hand, was show them...keepy-uppies?

-Yeah, yeah.

-The ball eventually went to Johnny.

-Yes.

-And I guess, like an American footballer,

he booted it as hard as he could,

and the ball went sailing over the terraced houses.

And that was the end of that game!

Bob had a charisma.

And I'll never forget that smile on his face.

Reggae has done more for race relations in England

than a lot of things, because... I can only speak for myself,

this is where I managed to integrate away from school with other races.

And when you're all enjoying something,

you've now got a common cause.

# This is the face of Fu Manchu... #

'We used to have parties downstairs in our basement.

'And that's where my dad's sound system was kept.'

We used to leave school early

and my big brother even used to hop school.

Yes.

And it was, like, Collingwood Girls School, Samuel Pepys,

they would all congregate down in the basement.

Plastic bags up at the windows.

All chatting, dancing.

And then it came about four o'clock, everyone would have to vacate.

Before my parents came home.

Yes!

MUSIC: Trench Town Rock by Bob Marley

# One good thing about music

# When it hits you, you feel no pain... #

Coming together around the latest sounds

was a massive part of my life, too.

Man alive, the hours I spent listening to new records,

talking about them, longing to be in bands!

They're incalculable.

In fact, at the record shop, I did little else.

Occasionally, however, I was rudely interrupted by a customer.

I could spot them as soon as they came in the shop.

They never needed to tell me what they wanted.

Ah, leopard-skin boots, mismatched colours, a few stars under the eyes.

Bowie, Roxy music, around there, mate.

Too much hair, smelling of patchouli oil,

full-length denim greatcoat, probably a headache.

Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, just over there.

And then there were the pale, introverted types, looking very serious.

They took things further, possibly a copy of Lord Of The Rings with them.

You want progressive rock, mate.

They were great!

MUSIC: Fanfare For The Common Man by Emerson, Lake & Palmer

This is, I hate to say,

is one of the very few pictures I have of me when I was around 14.

That was pretty much the uniform of the day for us prog rockers.

For the teenage prog rock fan Michael Coughlan,

the highlight of his week was leaving his home in Crawley and heading up

to a concert in town, to lose himself in another time, another space.

Here you have it.

The programmes. I've kept most of the stubs.

Genesis. Yes, at QPR.

Peter Gabriel at the Dome.

Camel. ELP, £2.20, in 1974.

Few hours, you'd be escaping with your mates,

you'd be up on a train to London.

You'd get to this, it was an hour-and-a-half, two hours of complete immersion.

It felt literally like you are immersed in something organic,

with all these lights flashing and music playing and people around you.

And this was, if nothing else, massive escapism.

It was taking you to a very, very different place.

MUSIC: Breathe by Pink Floyd

You know, these bands weren't singing about

growing up on a council estate.

This was about, you know, a completely imaginary world.

And then you'd come out, you'd talk about what you'd seen,

you'd get on the train, come home. You'd go to school the next morning if it was a weekday.

As most of them seem to be weekdays! Thursdays, Tuesdays.

Shocking parents!

When you look at some of the performances and you look at some of

the individuals and the characters involved in prog rock,

it was also a way of developing your personality and defining yourself as

something that took you beyond what you were at the time.

So I think it helped me come out of that shy, geeky, bookish,

glasses-wearing, nerdy person.

MUSIC: The Return Of The Giant Hogweed by Genesis

# ..stop them

# All around every river and canal their power is growing... #

I love prog rock.

Then again, during this period, I loved hard rock, soft rock,

what was in the charts, glam rock, R&B, reggae.

There was only one sort of music I didn't know anything about.

And to tell the truth, still don't.

See, it wasn't really made for me.

And geographically, it was miles from me.

It belonged to the North.

MUSIC: Come On Train by Don Thomas

This was a music for kids who worked, and worked hard,

mostly in heavy industries now vanished.

# Gotta go back home... #

It contained the promise of a weekend away, something to look forward to.

Their destination, an old ballroom in Wigan,

where thousands of mainly white, working-class music fans

would come from miles around to dance all night long

to rare old tunes.

This was Northern Soul.

# Train, come on train

# Train, come on train... #

I'll just come and get you some of my memorabilia.

Cheryl Saunders has still got a treasure trove of memorabilia from the best weekends of her life.

I worked in a bacon factory in Selby.

It was so boring.

Slices of bacon going past you constantly all day.

Vacuum-packed, noisy.

And it was great to be able to think,

I've got a weekend to look forward to.

I'll be seeing my friends, I'll be listening to the music that I love.

It's probably totally cliche, but it was a way of life.

It really was! Northern Soul was a way of life.

And there were times I shouldn't have gone because there were more

important things that I should have done.

But I was going to that all-nighter, no matter what.

If I'd planned it, I was going.

These are the shorts that I used to wear to Wigan.

I used to have two pairs.

And this is my boob tube that I used to wear.

And this was tucked into my shorts,

because it was so hot and sweaty and dirty.

Something just to have a little mop off.

The queues to get in often stretched right down the road,

five or six deep.

Take it easy, please! Take it easy!

Don't push!

Getting in, you'd be standing out in the queue.

There would be pushing to get through little doors.

You'd get in, and your bag would be coming after you,

somebody throwing it later because you couldn't get through,

it was just too tight.

And upstairs and open those doors, like, "Oh, my God!

"This is it, I've found my spot now."

# The night begins to turn your head around

# You know you're gonna lose more than you've found

# Yes, the night begins to turn your head around... #

The first time, it was like being hit by a wall of sound and heat.

It felt exciting, it felt like you were part of something.

My predominant smell of Wigan, I've heard somebody say that it was Aramis,

but in my head it's Brut.

That's all I can smell, because they put Brut talc on the floor,

and the boys would be wearing it.

Sweaty smell, dirty, horrible place, but a great, great vibe.

# And the second time I tried... #

It didn't really matter to these fans which artists sang the songs,

or what their heroes looked like,

so long as you could dance to the tunes.

This was all about the fans' performance.

# It's all up to you now

# Seven days is too long... #

The friendships that I've made,

the dirty, smutty clubs, the music, the atmosphere.

I can say that those people make up my friends.

I mean, I have got friends that are not into the music.

But I don't have the same friendship with them as I do with the people

that I met at all-nighters.

And that's what it is for me.

It's a way of life, it's my family.

It's a family I picked.

1970s music not only offered fans an escape

for a few hours or a night,

but its new culture of completely alternative personalities

was a thrilling option.

And here, we're back to Bowie.

A man of many masks.

Literally, in this case.

And I'm about to meet someone who has the physical remains

of one of his best-known personas.

Bought by her friend, it's now lovingly cared for by an ardent fan.

I was told you were bringing something extraordinary today,

that is beyond mere fandom.

Tell everyone what that is.

OK. Do you remember the documentary, Cracked Actor?

-Yeah.

-This is the facemask that was made from Cracked Actor.

Not based on it, that is it?

No, that's it. That's it.

Good grief!

That is absolutely gorgeous.

Isn't it? Do you want to try the weight?

Man alive! It weighs a tonne.

And feel. You know, the outrageously high cheekbones.

I mean, they're impossibly high. And you'll find that he's got a dimple in his chin.

-I never knew. Did you know?

-It's a funny thing doing that.

-It's almost intimate.

-It is almost intimate!

It is. It is, I don't like to do it to him.

Where do you keep it? What you do with it?

That's a terrible question.

I can tell you what I do with it!

-Have you ever kissed it?

-Honestly?

I kiss it every night!

And every morning!

And what does it mean beyond the physical thing to you?

If you think about it, you get a mask, you put it on.

You become someone else.

David Bowie wanted to be able to not go on stage as himself.

-No.

-He didn't want to wear the denims.

He wanted to be a different character,

and he wanted to be able to help people

to access their inner characters.

So he gave us permission to do that.

Yeah, I must say, a mask, of all performers,

-is pretty appropriate for Bowie's career.

-Absolutely.

Because it's this symbolism of, you can be whoever you want to be.

What the Beatles and the counterculture had set rolling in 1966 had

morphed into a kaleidoscope of different fan personas,

just a glorious decade on.

It suddenly seemed it could help us be the people we wanted to be.

To suggest opportunities, open doors.

It really could change things.

You know, I've been blessed with many things in life, I know that.

One of the things I feel most lucky about, is that it was in this period,

when music exploded with possibilities and magnificent sound,

that I got to be a fan.

MUSIC: Kooks by David Bowie

# Will you stay in our lovers' story

# If you stay you won't be sorry

# Cos we believe in you

# Soon you'll grow, so take a chance

# With a couple of kooks

# Hung up on romancing... #