Rock 'n' Roll Britannia 50s Britannia

GENTLE POP MELODY PLAYS

Long before The Beatles or The Stones...

..there existed a mysterious music.

It was called British rock and roll.

# Hear a newborn baby... #

Born into the hinterland of the late '50s...

..it was a strange facsimile of a distant original.

# That once brought you to me. #

# The desk clerk's dressed in black. #

I remember clearly hearing Elvis for the first time. My friends and I,

we were just wandering about one day, and this car -

I think it was one of those fancy French Citroens,

they looked a spacecraft -

and a guy jumped out,

left the engine running and the windows were down.

He went into a newsagent and, on the radio, we heard

Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel.

# So lonely, baby... #

Before we could find out what it was or who it was,

the guy got back in his car and drove off!

HEARTBREAK HOTEL CONTINUES

Through Elvis, really.

And Marlon Brando and James Dean.

All that same sort of time - '55, '56.

So, everybody, all the kids in Newcastle or Birmingham

or Liverpool, you know, John and Paul, we all wanted to be, "Aww..."

I still keep the sideburns, as a memory of the great man.

With Cliff, myself and Billy Fury, we were avid fans.

Thousands of us wanted to wake up being rock and roll singers

and just a few of us got lucky.

And I was one of them. I got lucky.

# Shake, rattle and roll

# Shake, rattle and roll. #

In the beginning, there was British rock and roll,

only it wasn't called that.

As early as 1953, British big bands, like Ted Heath

and Jack Parnell, thrilled jivers with performances

of American R&B and Western Swing, hot off Tin Pan Alley's presses.

Black American music was a facet of the British showbiz diamond

waiting to be realised.

# Shake, rattle and roll. #

It was there, right from the start, rock and roll being rhythmic

and energetic, and we were an energetic group.

And rock and roll had to be a must.

-# Talk to me, baby

-Talk!

# Whisper in my ears

# Talk, talk, talk

-# Mmm, talk to me baby.

-Talk!

# Whisper in my ears. #

This is the earliest surviving BBC footage of anything

resembling rock and roll, and dates from 1955.

The Southlanders were British-Jamaican entertainers

who covered American doo-wop for Dick Rowe's Decca Records.

# Whenever I hear Kokomo. #

There was a music publishers

and they were the agent for Rock Around The Clock.

They sent us a copy, for us to record.

We took it to Dick and Dick said, "No, nothing like that."

# I love you so! #

Kokomo!

Then, immediately Bill Haley came out with his version of it

and zoop! Number one.

We look at Dick Rowe and say, "Dick!" Dick says,

"Well, you win some, you lose some."

# Rock around the clock tonight

# Put your glad rags on Join me, hon. #

It would take the combination of a white American

and the mass marketing muscle of Hollywood to inaugurate

the rock and roll era in Britain.

Rock Around The Clock was a jazzy Tin Pan Alley number,

performed by avuncular Bill Haley.

But when the song was featured on the soundtrack

of Blackboard Jungle in late '55 and in the film Rock Around The Clock

a year later, the ensuing scenes led to moral outrage.

So this is from

the Daily Mail, then, as now, Britain's finest newspaper.

It's the editorial, "Rock And Roll Babies".

"Dig, folks. You're in for a rock and roll session which will send you.

"Or will it? Our purpose is not to work up, but to play down,

"to enquire into the high-pitched scream of the soprano saxophone

"and the maddening, monotonous, compulsive rhythm of the jazz drums."

"These are the main elements of rock and roll,

"this sudden musical phenomenon..." - 'musical' in inverted commas -

"..which has led to outbreaks of rowdyism.

"Under its influence, youths and girls jive in the gangways of cinemas

"and tear up the seats."

I went to see a film called Blackboard Jungle,

and when we came out, two guys with me, who were mates of mine,

were guitar players, and said,

"Oh, let's form a rock and roll group."

So I said, "Yeah. What do I play?"

They said, "You play drums." So I did.

"It is deplorable.

"It is tribal. And it is from America.

"It follows ragtime, blues, Dixie, jazz, hot cha-cha and boogie-woogie,

"which surely originated in the jungle.

"We sometimes wonder whether this is the negro's revenge."

# We're going to rock around the clock tonight

# We're going to rock, rock, rock Till broad daylight

# We're going to rock, going to rock Around the clock tonight. #

Bill Haley turned British youth onto the rebellious

possibility of rock and n roll.

But it would be a home-grown talent who would give them the means.

Like Haley, Lonnie Donegan had his roots in jazz,

and also insisted on wearing a suit to perform.

# Now this here's a story about the Rock Island Line

# The Rock Island Line She runs down into New Orleans

# And just outside of New Orleans There's a big toll gate

# And all the trains They go through the toll gate

# They got to pay the man some money

# But of course If you got certain things on board

# You're OK, you don't have to pay the man nothing

# And just now, we see a train She coming down the line

# And when she come up near the toll gate

# The driver He shout down to the man

# He say, "I got pigs I got horses, I got cows

# "I got sheep I got all livestock". #

Lonnie Donegan recorded Rock Island line, the huge hit that started

him off, really, in 1954,

and Elvis, eight days earlier had recorded It's All Right

in the Sun studios. The great thing about him is,

Lonnie, with three chords and a washboard and a bass player,

anybody could do it, suddenly. Anybody could get hold of a guitar,

make a guitar, buy a guitar and do it themselves.

Three chords, that's all it took. That's all Rock Island Line was.

# Mama don't allow no skiffle here

# Oh, no she don't

# Mama don't allow no skiffle... #

Lonnie Donegan invented skiffle.

A British take on American folk music,

skiffle was the proving ground for every notable British rock and roller.

# Mama don't allow no guitar playing in here

# Oh, no, she don't

# Mama don't allow no guitar playing in here

# Well, we don't care what Mama don't allow

# Going to play that guitar any old how

# Mama don't allow no guitar playing... #

What are your two names? Yours is...

-James Page and...

-David Haskell.

-Both from Epsom.

-Yes.

It was American, it was exotic, it was the Mississippi,

it was people breaking out of prison and listening to the

Midnight Special coming down the line

and the Wabash Cannonball, the great Grand Coulee Dam.

Where's that, for a boy from Harrogate?

You know, just marvellous stuff.

-You play anything except skiffle?

-Yes, Spanish and dance.

Do you, as well? Getting a move on.

What are you going to do when you leave school, take up skiffle?

I want to do biological research.

Working class kids suddenly thought you don't have to go to music

lessons on a Saturday morning with Ms Primstick to learn the piano.

You can pick up a thing and you can thrash it.

This is the song that started us on the rocky road of fame and fortune!

# Let me tell you what's going on

# The Rock Island Line She's mighty a mighty good road

# Rock Island Line is the road to ride

# Yes, Rock Island Line She's a mighty good road

# If you ride, you got to ride it like you find it

# Ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line

# A, B, C, W, X, Y, Z

# Cat's on the cover but he don't see me. #

Sometime in 1956, as a result of hearing Lonnie Donegan's

Rock Island Line,

a lot of people decided to form skiffle groups,

and at Quarry Bank school was a lad called George Lee,

and, apparently, he suggested to John Lennon, Eric Griffiths

and Pete Shotten that they start a skiffle group.

Over here, we've got Peter Shotten reclining in this chair,

and I think he's actually playing his washboard.

Next to him is Eric Griffiths, who is playing the guitar.

This with the back here and the smart checked shirt is Len,

playing the TCS bass.

Then, moving across, you got John sitting here,

playing his guitar and singing. He's got his eyes closed,

for some reason. And next to him is Colin, on the drums.

# Rock Island Line She's a mighty good road

# Rock Island Road is the road to ride. #

-It was exciting music.

-It was different music.

-It was lively music.

-It wasn't Doris Day.

-No, no. I like Doris Day.

I like her, but, you know...

One day, my washboard player Sid, says to me

"You got to come round my house."

He said "I've got a record to play for you." I said, "OK."

Now, Sid had a gramophone,

and you hired these things from a firm called Radio Rentals

and they used to actually push a hand barrow around the streets

with all these gramophones and radio things on it for hire.

And Sid had hired one of these,

and put the record on and a voice went....

# I'm going to tell Aunt Mary....

# About Uncle John

# He claims he had the misery But he having lots of fun

# Oh, baby

# Yes, baby #

I went, "What's going on here?" Little Richard, man.

Rock and roll, and it just hit skiffle a knockout blow,

really, to the jaw. And that was the end of skiffle.

# Well, I saw Uncle John with bald-headed Sally

# He saw Aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley

# Oh, baby

# Yes, baby

# Woooo-oooooh

# Baby

# Having me some fun tonight

# Yeah, ow! #

It's well known that American rock and roll

electrified British youth in 1956.

But it was a strangely invisible affair.

The tail end of a Musicians' Union ban on touring Americans

dating back to the '30s, meant rock and roll arrived, essentially,

via record and Radio Luxembourg.

They may have been oversexed and overpaid,

but they weren't over here...yet.

It's fascinating how suspicious people were about all things

American in the 1950s.

There was this sense that anything American was, by its very nature,

tawdry, debased, vulgar, commercialised...

You know, in some way a, kind of,

falling off from Britain's high standards.

And to the BBC,

which is still the, kind of, guardian of the Reithian ethos -

the cultural pyramid, where everybody will eventually

one day listen to the third programme and it would be terribly worthy -

the appearance of American music as a mass thing for young people,

is deplorable.

This is the BBC Variety Programmes Policy Guide,

for writers and producers, from 1948.

This was the Bible, really, if you were a BBC producer in the 1940s

and 1950s - what you could and couldn't get away with.

Vulgarity, for example, was a definite no-no.

"There is an absolute ban," it says upon the following -

jokes about lavatories, effeminacy in men, immorality of any kind.

"It is the corporation's policy actively to encourage British music,

"so long as this does not lead to a lowering of accepted

"musical standards."

"American idiom and slang frequently find their way,

"quite inappropriately, into scripts

"and dance band singers for the most part

"elect to adopt pseudo-American accents."

Oh, dear, oh, dear.

"The BBC believes this spurious Americanisation

"is unwelcome to the great majority of listeners."

"Jazzing The Classics:

"The jazzing by dance bands of classical tunes

"or the borrowing and adaptation of them is normally unacceptable."

Small wonder that, when it appeared,

British rock and roll was perhaps an undernourished affair.

Right now, ladies and gentlemen,

we would like you to meet another of Britain's rock and roll bands.

Let's give a big hand for Tony Crombie And His Rockets.

Our very first rock and roller was a jazz drummer...

..who had been inspired by the film Rock Around The Clock.

Tony Crombie went to see the film. He came away,

he formed his own rock 'n' roll band - all within about a month.

He recorded one of the tracks he had heard in the film,

which was Freddie Bell And The Bellboys doing Teach You To Rock,

and the first rock 'n' roll hit in the charts,

a number 25 hit, with that song.

# Let's you and I rock

# There's time to save your money

# And the time to save your soul

# But I think that this time, honey

# It's time to rock and roll

# If you're looking for a man... #

Teach You To Rock hit the charts in October '56.

This performance of a similar Haley-inspired number appeared

in one of Britain's first rock 'n' roll films, Rock You Sinners.

The kids in this country, not only could they buy the song,

but they could actually go and see him, which was a big deal.

If they wanted to go and see Bill Haley And The Comets at that time,

they would have to go over to the States to see them.

Let's take over from where that square just interrupted us, eh?

# His way with women was rather neat

# He'd love a girl right off her feet

# You know that lyric writers never lie

# It's where they got the sayin' "starry eye"

# Rock with the caveman... #

There was a real divide in cultural terms between the skiffle clubs,

which came out of jazz,

and rock and roll, which was seen as having more of a hoodlum element.

# Stalactite, stalagmite, hold your baby - rock it! #

And the first real British equivalent to Elvis

was Tommy Steele.

Rock With The Caveman was Steele's debut single.

He was our first rock and roll pin-up, but the recording

still featured older jazz musicians, including Ronnie Scott on sax.

# Piltdown poppa sings this song

# Archaeology's done me wrong

# British Museum's got my head

# Most unfortunate, cos I ain't dead

# Rock with the caveman... #

When Tommy Steele first went on tour in this country, and he started out,

I think in Sunderland was his first gig, and everybody screamed.

# Make with the caveman, here we go

# C-A-V-E...

# M-E-N - CAVEMAN! #

There was upset in the New Musical Express afterwards, because his hair was messy.

He hadn't combed it nicely before he went on.

That is the kind of tradition that he was having to try

and work in, where you had a suit and tie on for Saturday night,

Sunday night television

and anything outside of that was just seen as not very nice.

Tommy was the first rock and roll English star.

He came out of a place called the 2i's Coffee Bar.

All of Soho had coffee bars everywhere.

Heaven And Hell, with coffins and all that sort of stuff.

So when Hank and I came to London at the age of 16,

we went to the 2i's Coffee Bar, to be discovered,

as did Cliff and lots of other people.

The newly-arrived coffee bar was an exciting hangout for youth,

bored of old men's pubs.

Time gentlemen, please.

The rock and roll scene centred on the 2i's

in Soho's Old Compton Street.

Oh.

The sight of the 2i's Coffee Bar, when we first came in 1957.

This is it!

It all started here.

What about that, then, you know, we lived and died in here.

In 1957, the strange alchemy

transforming skiffle into rock 'n' roll at the 2i's

was captured on film, for a pre-feature cinema release.

I remember the film crew came down...

Everyone was very excited about that.

They asked us to play a number.

None of us knew what we were going to do.

So we just made up a fast 12-bar number.

Of course, rock 'n' roll in those days,

our rock 'n' roll, was a lot of swing rock 'n' roll in them days.

We all squeezed onto this stage and just rocked away...

at quite a fast tempo.

To those viewing it from the outside,

early British rock and roll was an amusement -

an amateur scene in the style of Bill Haley,

with the emphasis less on danger and more about good, clean fun.

Just another in a long line of popular music fads.

Sure, let's slip out, shall we? For a quiet cup of coffee.

You had rock and roll by 1956 and then by the start of '57

everybody is saying, "Oh, it is dead.

"The new thing is calypso", because of Harry Belafonte and the Banana Boat Song,

and so everybody in the music press here

and in America was quite happily saying,

"OK, rock and roll has had its six months, now let us forget that

"and get onto the next thing," because that was the way

the music business worked really, all the way through to the Beatles.

There was always a new dance, always a new sound and nobody

imagined that rock and roll could possibly have any staying power.

# Daylight come

# And me wanna go home. #

Other than the faint crackle of Radio Luxembourg,

the only place to hear rock and roll was on the BBC,

who ruled Britannia's airwaves in the 1950s.

The corporation did its level best to snuff out the new music,

by convening its Dance Music Policy Committee.

So these are the banned songs - "Mack The Knife.

"Originally allowed to be broadcast only in the context of The Threepenny Opera."

# Well, a hard-headed woman A soft-hearted man

# Been the cause of trouble ever since the world began... #

"Hard-Headed Woman - refer to the head of religious broadcasting,

"June 16, 1958."

"Love Is Strange." Well, the title says it all.

That's definitely dubious.

-# Sylvia?

-Yes, Mickey... #

"Passed with the condition of an alternative lyric."

# Come here, lover boy! #

"Rock, You Sinners." Well, that's again, a bit dodgy.

"Not passed for broadcasting, 9 April, 1957."

I suppose sinners and all this, sort of, religious baggage that would go with it.

Definitely out.

# Oh, baby

# My sweet baby... #

But in February 1957,

on the brash, and frankly, American medium of television,

there was a break in BBC ranks.

# Over the points Over the points, over the points

# Over the points Over the points, over the points

# Over the points Over the points... #

# The Six-Five Special going down the track

# The Six-Five Special right... #

Somethin' like that sort of business!

Really, I mean, it was a great catchy thing

and you waited at six o'clock on a Saturday night

because this is the first time you had seen popstars,

rock and roll stars, appearing on TV.

Up until the start of '57,

there was a break between six o'clock and seven o'clock

when decent, middle-class parents were supposed to put their children to bed.

The very first TV programme

that filled the gap between kids' programs

and adults' was the first edition of Six-Five Special in February 1957.

It's time to jive on the old six-five!

The Six-Five Special featured the great and good of the British

dance band scene, trying their best to jump the rock and roll train.

# Everybody do the rock

# Everybody do the roll

# Everybody do the rock and roll with the merry old soul

# Called Old King Cole... #

So you get jazz musicians playing on live TV shows,

playing rock 'n' roll music.

Don Lang And His Frantic Five. Jazzers, correct.

Not rock and rollers.

If you look back at the Radio Times,

they are actually billing it as being for the young at heart, not

for young people, cos they didn't want to put adults off watching it.

So really, there is still a teenage market that is being missed there.

The trouble with the Six-Five Special is what they used to do

was put in little bits of public service announcements and things

like that, teaching you how to cross the road and all this sort.

It wasn't very hip at all, with these little bits in.

Why do men climb mountains? Because they are there!

At least, that's the only reason

the members of the Polytechnic Climbing Club gave me.

It is anything but a cutting edge, hoodlum-laced,

fast-paced rock and roll show.

Nearly there.

And this is as good a place as you will find to take a breather.

There is a wonderful view at this stage

and I am beginning to understand why people climb mountains.

All right, you guys, rise and shine!

Born into a country where the original was scarce and seized upon

by older professional musicians,

early British rock'n'roll simply did not move a restless generation.

British youth craved the excitement and danger of the real deal,

living in the hope that one day a saviour would appear in their midst.

-NEWSREEL:

-Liner Queen Elizabeth glided in sedately enough.

It was Southampton that was rock'n'rolling for the arrival of Bill Haley and his Comets.

Here on a tour of Britain, Bill left for London

and soon that boat train was rocking over the rails in hep time.

MUSIC: "Forty Cups Of Coffee" by Bill Haley and his Comets

# 40 cups of coffee

# 40 cups of coffee

# 40 cups of coffee... #

On the 5th of February 1957,

British youth got the opportunity it had long dreamed of,

with the arrival in the UK of the first American rock'n'roller,

31-year-old Bill Haley.

-# 40 cups of coffee

-40 cups of coffee

# 40 cups of coffee waiting for you to come home... #

The first record I ever bought was a Bill Haley record,

but we hadn't really seen him.

It was only when he came to England and I saw him on the television

getting off the train at Euston Station.

He had a camel-hair coat with a big belt on.

-Yeah, a bit of a letdown, wasn't it, really?

-Wow!

-It was a letdown.

"He looks like me old uncle. I'm having nothing to do with him!"

-NEWSREEL:

-The visit of Bill Haley began in grand style.

The forthcoming tour will be crazy, man, crazy, so you cats

keep your enthusiasm in bounds and don't let the squares stop the rock.

CROWD CHANT: We want Bill! We want Bill!

We loved Bill Haley's records, but we didn't want to be Bill Haley.

We wanted to be, you know, Little Richard, Fats Domino,

all the greats that followed, you know.

By 1958, British emulators had begun to supplant Bill Haley's swing

with more sophisticated attempts.

In Liverpool, one group made its first recording,

with a Buddy Holly cover.

# That'll be the day when I die... #

Well, by '58 the Quarrymen line-up had changed considerably.

Obviously, John was the main man when we started, erm,

but then we met Paul McCartney and then, a bit later on,

we met George Harrison, so it was John, Paul, George and meself.

And they found out that, in Kensington in Liverpool,

you could actually go to this guy's house and pay a small fee

and he would make a... a record for you.

# That'll be the day when I die... #

This would have been blank when we left Percy Phillips' studio.

Paul's written here, "That'll Be The Day" and, underneath, "Holly/Petty"

and on the other side, we've got Paul's song,

In Spite Of All The Danger,

and he's written underneath "McCartney/Harrison".

The Quarrymen are an absolutely perfect example of the genesis

and journey of British popular music

in the second half of the 20th century.

They're hearing, they're listening,

they're absorbing all the time, and those ripples,

those explosions, lead to this, kind of, massive nuclear epicentre

where British beat is born.

ROCK'N'ROLL PLAYS

The power and reach of newly-formed commercial television would

finally provide British rock'n'roll with a fitting platform.

In September 1958, former Six-Five Special producer Jack Good

was released from his public service obligations and let loose on ITV.

The result was spell-binding.

-CROWD SCREAM

-OK, come and get it! It's Oh Boy!

# Oh, oh, oh, oh Wait for it, baby

Oh Boy took the cream of British rock'n'roll

and served it up to a hungry audience.

# Oh, yeah!

# Wait for it, baby! #

The young people went mad.

And I think some of the older people also suddenly went,

"What is this that's happening?" You know.

And it just took off, it just took off with flying colours.

# Don't look now but we're being followed

# Hey, there, baby

# Don't look now but we're being followed... #

It was all really tightly choreographed, to make it look

as exciting as possible, to make it look as if there was

the wildest rock'n'roll show in the world and it was taking place now.

# But recall what Mama said That stranger means stranger

# Yeah! #

But it was so exciting, and the musicians were fantastic.

The band was fantastic, the sound was fantastic.

# Ooh! #

And so the excitement was there every week

and you waited to see who came on.

The show's backbone was Lord Rockingham's XI,

a scratch band of ace jazzers, anchored by the first lady

of British rock'n'roll, Cherry Wainer.

They were session musicians. Red Price was with Ted Heath's band.

I think Benny Green was the top session musician.

None of them were rock musicians until they came onto the show.

So of course we never went on the road.

Rockingham's XI just only existed for those records,

which is a shame, because I think if they had gone on the road

at that time it would have stayed up there for quite a while.

SHE PLAYS "HOOTS MON"

Lord Rockingham's XI scored a very British number one in 1958.

# Hoots, mon, there's a moose loose aboot this hoose. #

Maybe you remember that one.

It just jumped to the top, which has never happened,

never happened in England.

Up until then, there had never been an instrumental at number one

in the hit parade and, all of a sudden, Hoots Mon was number one.

# Hoots, mon, there's a moose loose aboot this hoose. #

That's one you should remember.

It's a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht tonight.

# Hoots, mon It's a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht

# Hoots, mon! #

British rock'n'roll was a strange facsimile,

born into a cultural vacuum.

Nobody really knew what to do with it, least of all the British recording industry.

In Britain, there were only really four major record companies

and I don't think any of them understood rock'n'roll.

Well, they hadn't got anybody on board who was young, for a start.

They were very much geared towards making records

that either were going to appeal to an adult audience

and, therefore, might have a slightly longer shelf life, or were going to

appeal to young people, who were notoriously fish-brained

and they would forget something within two minutes, so just give them

some rubbish and then they'll buy the next rubbish that comes along.

Nevertheless, the arrival of rock'n'roll

delivered the first million-selling singles

and kick-started what became a 50-year gold rush for record labels.

By the mid to late '50s, Britain's recovered from

the Second World War, the great, kind of, consumer boom is underway.

The average, kind of, 16-year-old, 17-year-old maybe gets pocket money

and there are a lot of people out there who are very keen to

take that money from you. Chief among them are the record companies.

And rock'n'roll is their way, basically,

of taking that money off you and putting it into their own pockets.

-NEWSREEL:

-Civilised man has always craved some sweet-sounding instrument

so that he might make music and be glad.

It wasn't just a record label that could thwart

the ambition of an aspiring rocker.

Today, his fancy turns more and more

to something he can hang easily around his neck.

A Board of Trade ban on the sale of American goods meant that

the tools of the trade lay tantalisingly out of reach.

You couldn't go in a shop and buy an American guitar, like you can now.

You know, "I'll have a Telecaster. Can I have a Stratocaster,

"can I have a Gretsch?"

You couldn't get them, you just couldn't get them.

We were stuck with these German guitars,

which didn't go down too well, actually,

as the war had just finished, but they were made of German plywood.

I saw this in my local music store. In Wolverhampton, there was

a shop called the Band Box.

It's a Dallas Tuxedo, an English bass.

The neck is about as fat that way as it is this way.

On Buddy Holly's first album, which is called The "Chirping" Crickets,

you see him posing with the guys

and you saw this thing, and we didn't know what it was.

It looked like a spaceship.

And Cliff said, "I'll get one of those," and he had to import it.

Well, the dream was to have a Fender Precision Bass.

It's a real instrument. This was a kind of...amateur plank, really.

So this became, courtesy of Cliff,

who paid 140 guineas for it,

this became the first Fender Strat in the UK

and I would guess in Europe, too.

This is the first time this has been plugged in for 52 years,

so I hope it works.

The radio is from 1952.

This is not going to work now, is it?

HE LAUGHS

HE PLAYS "PEGGY SUE"

Thank you, Buddy Holly.

Ah. Right...

Yeah. We have sound.

HE PLAYS "RAVE ON"

COCK CROWS

CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYS

The success of Oh Boy provided both a market and framework

that allowed British rock'n'roll to grow in confidence and stature.

The show was the finishing school for a new generation

of British boy stars beamed into living rooms nationwide.

Perhaps its most significant contribution to rock'n'roll culture

was the discovery of Britain's first rock'n'roll god.

People have got to put aside their prejudices,

cos in the end, history doesn't give a darn

whether you like a record or not or whether you like an artist or not,

it's just independent of what he or she did or didn't do.

And one thing that they'll never be able to take away from me is that...

I did play a major, major role in the birth

and the growth of pop/rock music.

MUSIC: "Move It" by Cliff Richard and the Drifters

With his first single, Cliff laid down British rock'n'roll's

finest two and a half minutes.

# Come on, pretty baby Let's a-move it and a-groove it

# Shake, oh, baby, shake, oh, honey Please don't lose it

# The rhythm that gets into your heart and soul

# Now, let me tell you, baby It's called rock'n'roll... #

The great thing about it, it was written by Ian Samwell,

who was playing guitar with Cliff, at the time.

It was written as a defence of rock'n'roll,

because he'd read an article in a newspaper or the NME or something

saying, "Bill Haley's rubbish,

"rock'n'roll should be thrown away," and he said,

"NO, this is great stuff" and he writes his rock'n'roll manifesto.

And I think that's why it's delivered with such,

sort of, snarling conviction by the band and also by Cliff,

because this was something they really believed in.

The one thing that I'd like to think would become true is that

people would recognise what Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, me,

the Shadows, a couple of other people did to create something that

became...just different enough to become European.

Or otherworldly.

# Come on, pretty baby Let's a-move it and a-groove it

# Shake, oh, baby, shake, oh, honey Please don't lose it

# The rhythm that gets into your heart and soul

# Well, let me tell you, baby It's called rock'n'roll... #

-NEWSREEL:

-An ordinary street in a nice part of London.

An attractive, but ordinary, house,

except that it's occupied by the parents of one of showbusiness's most appreciative sons.

This is where Mr and Mrs Smith live.

Their most frequent visitor is their son,

a boy the pop music world knows better as Marty Wilde.

Well, this is my nostalgia room here, really.

It's just everything that was

part of my life through the '50s.

Mrs Smith is proud of her son.

All around the sitting room are souvenirs of Marty's struggles

to climb up the ladder of fame,

people he met and the shows in which he starred.

I wouldn't have collected it myself but my mother, after

she passed away, she left me this box with a load of paraphernalia.

A lot of this, they're my mother's things, really!

Like Cliff, Marty Wilde also came to fame via Oh Boy.

In the Tin Pan Alley era,

Marty was one of the first to write his own songs.

Er, this is a silver disc.

It was awarded for a quarter of a million British sales of Bad Boy.

Although it was British, it had a good feel.

It was a song that I wrote more out of frustration than anything else.

The basis of that song was the idea of a bad boy being, you know,

looked down upon by his parents, in those naive times!

Staying out late.

# Well, you see now I've got a girl

# And we stay out late Almost every night

# Well, the people just stare and they declare

# Well, well, it just ain't right

# But if only they knew how I love you they'd say bad boy... #

Marty wasn't really wild.

He was part of a generation of well-behaved stars whose every action

was guided by older men with an eye on the burgeoning pop market.

# Open up, Bonnie, it's your loverboy, me, that's a-knocking

-# Oh, won't you listen to me, sugar... #

-Nah, nah.

-That's not the sort of song we want.

-Well, you have a go, then.

No, it's this type of thing.

Rock'n'roll was born into the world of British showbiz

and the men in charge kept a tight rein on their steeds.

# Well, I don't care if the sun don't shine

# I've got my loving little girl right by my side

# With my baby... #

In the staid, respectable neighbourhood of Kensington,

there's a nice, upper-income-bracket block of flats.

Inside, a doormat, over which pass some rather flashy feet.

The doormat belongs to Mr Laurence Maurice Parnes,

who also owns a batch of golden boys.

# I want to be your lover

# But your friend is all I stay... #

Roy Taylor, 18, alias Vince Eager.

Larry had this tendency to want to dress us

and give us our image, which is fair enough,

but, you know, I was a Lincolnshire lad and wearing pink shirts

and having permed hair didn't happen in Grantham - for lads, anyway.

Do you rechristen all your boys?

Oh, yes, I think this is terribly important.

For example, Marty Wilde, as you probably know,

his real name was Reg Smith.

He was a big tall lad, of six foot four,

who had to be kept friendly, yet he had to be kept...wild.

Well, Larry always wanted...

He wanted a powerful surname, so you had a Fury, you had a Power,

you had a Gentle! I don't know why he called him Johnny Gentle, but anyway.

He had a Pride, he had an Eager.

And I got the worst one of the lot.

Mine's terrible.

I think, in my case, I quite like the name Marty Wilde.

I'm not sure I would have liked to have had some of the other names!

PHONE RINGS

-Hello, Larry Parnes speaking.

-Do you control the market in rock singers?

Well, if I do control the market in rock singers, it was never

my intention to do so, but it's a very fortunate position to be in.

-Do you think that Joe Brown has a future?

-Oh, yes.

Yeah, I mean, Peter Sellers has done stuff on Larry Parnes, you know.

"Would you like to see a pop singer? I'll get one for you."

And all that, you know, the Major.

-SELLERS, AS ROCKER:

-Oh, er, Major?

Some rotten hound's pinched the strings off my guitar, look.

-AS "MAJOR":

-You've got the guitar on back to front.

How many times must I tell you, the hole points away from you?

-AS ROCKER:

-Oh! So much to learn, so little time.

-AS "MAJOR":

-And you should know better than to enter this part of the flat.

It's in your contract - where the carpet begins, you halt.

Now, which one are you, anyway?

-AS ROCKER:

-Er, Cyril Rumble.

The controlling interests of showbiz sought to keep our stars

nice and presentable.

MUSIC: "Brand New Cadillac" by Vince Taylor

But in 1959, British rock n'roll produced its first bona fide

rebel without a cause.

There's me.

# Well, my baby drove off in a brand new Cadillac. #

Everybody assumes Vince Taylor is American,

because he came from America,

but he was actually born just outside London and then was

shipped off to the States at a very young and impressionable age.

# Ain't never coming back

# Baby, baby, baby Won't you listen to me?

# Come on, sugar... #

He could carry himself like nobody else,

and on a record like Brand New Cadillac, it's all attitude.

It's all swagger. It's all, sort of, juvenile delinquency.

# Cadillac car, oh, yeah! #

The way he performed, like Gene Vincent, really,

he was a Gene Vincent clone.

Really swung inwardly, you know? He was swinging inward and outwardly.

# Caddy's rolling and going about 95

# Oh, the Caddy's rolling Going about 95. #

He lived his dream to the hilt.

# I say baby, baby, baby Won't you listen to me? #

These guys in the late '50s are the real pioneers.

I mean, these are people who are exciting, threatening.

# Scotty, here we go! #

There's this sense of uncertainty, I think, which is

so nice about the, sort of, late '50s music.

You know, it's something entirely new

and nobody knows where it's going to go.

And it, kind of, has this joie de vivre about it,

this sort of spirit of the pioneer, of really having fun with it.

# My baby took off in a brand new Cadillac. #

They're creating their world around them, in a way.

# She looked at me "Daddy, I ain't ever coming back." #

But what I like about this is the ending.

If you listen to the ending,

everything was choreographed beautifully.

# Cadillac car, oh, yeah! #

Ooh.

# Well, be-bop-a-Lula... #

In January 1960, rock and roll-starved Brits

were treated to a double helping of the real deal,

when Americans Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran visited the UK.

With their backing bands unable to come, promoter Larry Parnes

hooked the duo up with the stars of British rock and roll.

That's Eddie Cochran, that's myself,

and this was taken backstage at the Gaumont in Bradford in 1960.

Gene Vincent, Joe Brown, Eddie Cochran, Adam Faith,

and I'm at the very end.

# Be-bop-a-Lula, she's my baby. #

That's Eddie, Gene and myself with a bunch of admiring ladies,

which was quite nice.

Used to do that as often as we could, go and meet the fans,

and the boys were always enjoying meeting English roses.

Great picture.

Fond memories.

The tour brought into focus the innate danger

of American rock and roll.

People used to come to me and say,

"Gene's waving that gun around on the coach." You know, a gun.

I said, "What are you doing?" "He likes you." You know.

And then you'll go and sit with him and...

With this bloody gun, you know.

And he'd point it at you and go,

"I don't want to hurt YOU, Joe." I was like, "Put it away, mate.

"It's England, you can't do that." "Is it loaded?", he said.

"What's the point of having a gun if it ain't loaded?"

and all that, you know.

Equally dangerous was the revolutionary guitar style

of Eddie Cochran.

# I'm going to raise a fuss I'm going to raise a holler

# About working all summer just to try to earn a dollar. #

I remember when Eddie Cochran came over.

# Every time I call my baby Try to get a date... #

That was the change from just swinging away to, like,

Summertime Blues.

# Ain't no cure for the summertime blues. #

Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, ding-da.

That was, sort of, a new rhythm at the time, you know,

which not many were actually doing.

# Well, I called my Congressman and he said, quote

# I'd like to help you, son But you're too young to vote

# Sometimes I wonder what I'm going to do

# Cos there ain't no cure for the summertime blues. #

Cochran's rockabilly guitar had a huge impact

on the sound of a little-known classic from 1960,

now seen as British rock and roll's first great album.

There you are, The Sound Of Fury. Do you want to hear it?

Come on, kid.

Right, here we go.

Touch like a midwife.

# Someday, somehow

# I know we'll make that vow

# That's love

# Baby, I know that's love. #

A lot of pop stars, rock stars, were having songs written for them

by the Tin Pan Alley writers.

Billy Fury wrote his own songs.

All of Sound Of Fury is written by Billy Fury, each song.

# Well, that's love

# My love. #

So, Billy Fury, I suppose,

is the first British singer to not just be a rock and roll fan,

not just take on board everything that's come out of America,

but also find a way to make it his own,

to actually turn it into, sort of, confessional music, in a way

that I don't think anybody else in this country had done before.

# Baby, I know that's love. #

It shows in Joe Brown's playing.

It was only 1960 when he met Eddie Cochran and, by April,

he was playing guitar on The Sound Of Fury,

and sounds as if he was born in Memphis, you know.

Well, it's great.

I am pleased to be associated with it,

cos you don't get the opportunity to do this kind of thing anymore.

You're sitting around virtually jamming.

It was all done really quickly.

Only in those days, if I was doing sessions,

I'd do an album in the morning and another album in the afternoon.

You know?

Got to get to a recording session.

See you.

# That's love. #

It was recorded in April, 1960,

which was probably less than 18 months after he'd been discovered.

So to actually go from being dictated what records he had to cover

and he had to play to actually producing his own LP was amazing.

# That phone will ring today

# You know my number. #

It's a sound which nobody else captured, really, in this country.

# Please call, baby

# And say you're mine. #

Hit it!

Billy Fury is one of the lost greats of British rock 'n' roll.

So much so that, when Larry Parnes held an audition for a backing band

in 1960, the group that had started out as The Quarrymen turned up.

The Silver Beetles didn't get the gig that day,

but John Lennon came away with an autograph

from the king of British rock'n'roll.

# I'm tired of being all alone

# Waiting by my telephone

# Waiting for no-one but you

# Please call me, baby Say your love is true... #

For guys in those days to write

their own songs was very unusual.

Marty and, of course, Billy Fury

was another one that actually

did write a lot of his own stuff.

For me, one of the best guys I worked with in that era

was Johnny Kidd, of course. Johnny Kidd & The Pirates.

Again, Johnny wrote some of his stuff, which was unusual.

Shakin' All Over.

Shakin' All Over, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates,

my favourite British rock'n'roll record by a mile.

I thought it was authentic rock'n'roll. I loved it.

Shakin' All Over by Johnny Kidd & The Pirates

was the apex of British rock'n'roll's 45rpm journey.

# When you move in right up close to me

# That's when I get the shakes all over me... #

I always think that Shakin' All Over is probably the first

British record that actually is made by a group of people

who are 100% convinced that they are doing the right thing.

# Quivers down the backbone

# I got the shakes down the kneebone

# Yeah, the tremors in the thighbone

# Shakin' all over... #

With Shakin' All Over, it's almost like the birth of rock

five years before anybody had even considered the idea

that there could be a rock culture.

It just sounds like this organic thing that has always existed

and had to come out to the surface.

# Doo doo-doo

# Doo doo-doo-de-doo

# Doo doo-doo

# Doo doo-doo

# Doo doo-doo

# Doo doo-doo... #

To the outside world, British rock'n'roll

had always been regarded as a passing fad

and, by 1960, the writing was on the wall.

# I'll meet you at your locker

# When the school's dismissed... #

The 16-year-olds who had screamed at Tommy Steele in 1956

were now 20. In the '50s, that meant grown-up.

# Doo doo-doo

# Doo doo-doo-de-doo

# Doo doo-doo... #

It was time to act like a responsible adult.

The assumption, really, among everybody

was that this was something you would buy and listen to

between the ages of about 14 and 18,

and then you would stop. You know, in the same way that

you would no longer read Famous Five books or have a skipping rope,

or, you know, be interested in toy tanks when you were an adult,

because those were children's things. There was no sense at the time

that this was an art form that might have more sophistication

and depth to it, and might be something that, as an adult,

you would voluntarily buy for yourself and not your children.

# Doo doo-doo-de-doo

# Doo doo-doo... #

Because hard rock didn't last that long.

What we call rock'n'roll style was, maybe, two or three years,

and then it was sanitised by all of us.

MUSIC: "The Young Ones" by Cliff Richard

By the turn of the decade,

Cliff had mirrored the journey of his American counterpart Elvis,

by transposing himself from vinyl to celluloid.

# The young ones

# And young ones

# Shouldn't be afraid... #

We lost that, sort of, rock'n'roll edge,

and we were suddenly into The Young Ones, you know.

Mums' and dads' tunes and, you know, all-round entertainers.

By the time The Beatles came, Cliff and The Shadows

and a few others were The Rat Pack, in a way.

# Why wait until tomorrow

# Cos tomorrow

# Sometimes never comes... #

The pioneers of British rock'n'roll

created the foundations and culture for everything that has followed

in a 50-year golden era of popular music,

and now, well into their seventies,

the flame still burns strong in the original Young Ones.

Good evening, viewers!

If you're wondering who I am, let me show you.

I'm one of the rock'n'roll stars from the 1950s.

Started in '57.

Still doing a good job, even though I'm coming up to...

What is it? 80. Well, that's getting old. It's terrible.

But I'm enjoying it. It's a lovely life.

OK, here we go.

# I turned on the Dansette and I lifted the arm

# Rock Island Line It's a mighty fine line

# My pa said the music It could do me some harm

# Rock Island Line It's a road to ride

# The record played Was it Rock Island Line?

# Lonely together Lonnie and I were doing fine

# I headed for London A long way from home

# Recorded for Decca Sang Lend Me Your Comb

# And, of course, appeared on the Oh Boy and the Six-Five Special... #

British rock 'n' roll -

a strange beast because, in a way, it almost never existed.

You can blink and look backwards and think,

"No, it never actually happened."

It went seamlessly from the big band era straight into The Beatles.

# I'll make you a star, son If you're looking for fame

# Cos I'm Larry Parnes and I'll change your name... #

And that's why the arrival of The Beatles and The Stones,

'63, '64, comes as such a shock.

Although, actually, they were really just

a continuation of what had happened earlier,

it is the first time that it's got any staying power.

# You're never too old to rock'n'roll

# It's in your spirit It's in your soul

# So if you like the music and you wanna hear more

# Call out the rock'n'roll dinosaur

# That's me. #

Yeah.

# That's me. #

Hey!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd