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| 1956 |
| One of the boys at my school, Stephen Gold, actually managed to persuade
his mum to buy him a guitar so he decided to form a group. None of us could
play a note but we all fought to carry the guitar as we walked down the
street. That was really cool. So were suede jackets with the collar turned
up. We thought we were the cat's whiskers, even if our jackets were suedette
rather than the real thing.
By that time my brother had learnt a few chords on the ukelele, then progressed to a banjo. Somebody had given me a little toy plastic guitar with four strings so I tuned my guitar to the ukelele and managed to learn a few chords from Ron. Then at least one person in the group could play a tune. There were six of us altogether; Susan, her younger brother, Glenn, Stephen and another boy from school named Melvin Fields, a chubby little kid called Mark Fold and myself* In actual fact Mark had a guitar too, but he couldn't play either. It didn't put us off. We used to prattise in Stephen's house and before long we were pounding out things like 'Hound Dog', 'Got a Lot of Living to Do', 'Don't Be Cruel' and 'Teddy Bear'. Till Buddy Holly came along when 'That'H Be the Day' joined our repertoire. A couple of times we went and entertained the kids who had to go for school dinners in the holidays because their parents worked. Then we hit on the bright idea of playing at the local cafe. We got cups of tea in exchange and even the occasional shilling. I suppose it could count as my first professional engagement. Mark Feld was a real showman in spite of being a year younger than the rest of us. His big claim to fame was a quiffhe was able to comb down to cover his face, and the fact that he was the first of us to discover Cliff Richard. He used to fancy himself as Cliff and had us all singing 'Come on pretty baby, let's move it and a groove it,' before long. It came as no surprise to see him making a name for himself as Marc Bolan just a few years later. In fact most of that group made their presence felt in the music industry. Stephen went on to become a writer and a singer. He had a hit record under the name of Stephen Jameson then teamed up with another guy to produce a version of 'Walk Away Renee' Susan, who has a lovely voice, became a singer but being my cousin didn't do her any favours. Glenn made a record too. It didn't really do anything but that little group of East End kids clocked up quite a few achievements. |
| 1961 |
| We were up at the club one evening playing 'You Don't Know' when I got another shock. Mark Feld came in with a load of his pals from a rival club up the road at Stamford Hill. They were 'modernists'; dressed to the nines in Italian suits, with short 'bum-freezer' jackets and smart trousers. The girls' winkle-pickers were at least nine inches long and they had tight, tight dresses. By this time Mark had slimmed down and got a good face, and did he know it. He walked in like he owned the place. He was friendly enough, but definitely wanted to think he was king, which didn't go down too well. We were just a little club but we thought we were terribly 'in, and here was this guy making a big entrance. I found out later he'd been doing a bit of male modelling, which explained a lot. At the time my reaction was more along the lines of 'Who does he think he is?' |
| 1964 |
| If I'd known that this was to be the beginning of some long hard years
slogging round the clubs I might not have been quite so enthusiastic but
the advantages at the time seemed to outweigh the disadvantages. I was
excited to be doing something different which gave me more time to broaden
out my act and meant I could abandon my frothy, frilly dresses and go for
the straight cocktail style. I deviated for a while when Marianne Faithfoll
made the more ethereal typeoWdress the 'in' thing but I didn't stay with
that for long. I'm not really the ethereal type.
Marc Bolan was more into that kind of scene. I met him again at one
of the parties given by FAB magazine, which was allied to Luxembourg. He'd
lost his swagger, and was telling me all about the record he was hoping
to make. He'd been living in a wizard's house in Paris and was very into
the occult. I must have stared at him open-mouthed. I couldn't believe
this guy in the Donovan hat and donkey jacket. He was a one off; a totally
different character from when he was a kid.
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| 1977 |
| We'd been through the Philadelphia sound, and glam rock, with Marc
Bolan and Gary Glitter, and were now into the punk era couldn't believe
the rubbish some of the groups were getting away with, or the hype about
youth trying to express themselves. I thought punk was the most unmusical
load of old codswallop; totally foul and disgusting. Abba were much more
to my taste.
Marc Bolan was just right for the glam rock scene. I could see the attraction. He had a good face. The thing that really touched me was the way he always mentioned the group we had at Northwold Road Primary School whenever he was interviewed. We were both asked be on Saturday morning telly, on one of the programmes for kids, to talk about our group, which made me a bit of a cult figure for a while. The youngsters were bowled over. 'You grew up with Marc Bolan. Wow. What was it like?' Apparently he had been looking pretty lousy at one point but by that time he'd started to make a comeback, and was his old T-Rex self. He and his woman had just had a baby and he was thrilled because life felt so good. I hadn't seen him for years so we had a lot of news to catch up with. He wanted to know all about my cousins Sue and Glenn. I was devastated when I heard Marc had died in a car crash six months later. He was only 29. Nobody expects to lose their friends at that age, or at least we didn't then. |
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