This
story is about a group of us in the Spring of 1964 when, in the space
of one hour, we recorded 2 tracks at the Regent Sound Studios in
Denmark Street, I played Mick Jagger’s sparkling new Gretsch
(Countryman?) guitar and we were discovered by the man from Decca Records! If that wasn't enough, the ending of our relationship with Decca was fairly
dramatic too.
It
all started in early 1964 when I was a 16 year old junior soldier at
Bovington Camp in Dorset, close to where I live now. I joined up
from Dublin in January ‘63 and was still very green behind the
gills. I had taken up the guitar a couple of years previously but
had quite recently graduated from playing with only 4 strings
(requiring some creative tuning!), to using all 6 strings. Somehow I
got a place in a group along with three other lads of a similar age
and the army provided enough basic amplification for us to perform in
the NAAFI club etc. The piano player and vocalist, and my best
friend at that time, was John Hardie. Apart from being the most
musically accomplished among us, John had a brother Sam (called Keith
by the family) who played piano with King Size Taylor and the
Dominoes and was right in the midst of the Merseybeat scene. Sam had
done the lot, including the Cavern and the Star Club in Hamburg, and
the Hardie house had photos on the walls of him with Gene Vincent,
Little Richard and various American and British artistes. John talked
very casually about times when Cilla, Gerry Marsden and other top
performers of the day had rehearsed in his front room, he even had a
Dad who worked in a record shop in Crosby!
Our
group was called The Rythmn Runners - yes, it was even misspelt on
the bass drum! I played lead on an anonymous acoustic guitar with a
pickup in the hole and shared the singing. Rhythm was played by Gray
Stockton who had a proper electric Watkins guitar, very snazzy in
it’s day. Gray's claim to fame was managing to hide his
gravity-defying quiff under his beret away from the military
authorities for most of the time he was in training! The drummer,
Paul Cantwell, was quiet and unassuming, spoke like a cockney and
was a reliably good drummer. We didn’t have a bass player most of
the time but John would play bass if the venue didn’t have a piano.
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| Publicity Shot on a Bad Hair Day |
What
we didn’t know until we went up to stay with Paul on the Friday
was that the Rolling Stones used the studio for their recordings for
Decca at that time, something that proved to be a godsend later on.
How he got them, I’ve no idea, but Paul had a slack handful of
reject Rolling Stones recordings! They were on acetate disks about
the size of a 45 record but thicker and heavier. He played his
amazing collection to us as we sat in his front room mesmerised.
Here was one of the very top groups of the day in the process of
producing some of the most exciting and iconic R&B music tracks
ever recorded and we had a private insight into their world. We
thought nothing less of them when we heard mistakes or bum notes
because we knew how fantastic the final outcome would be. We also
knew very well that they were in a totally different league to us.
The one track that has stayed in my memory ever since was Route
66 which was full of all
the great excitement and feel that was loved about the Stone’s
music, but this version speeded up noticeably in the middle. I have
no idea who has those acetates now but I would have thought a
collector would give their eye teeth for them? It is fair to say
that if nothing else had taken place that weekend I would have been
very happy just hearing those recordings, I was blown away. After
all, we played their
songs in our
repertoire and Keith Richard was top of my list of guitar heroes.
As
it was, being young and naive, and in London for the very first time,
we went into town that evening, witnessed the sights and sounds of
Soho and wandered the streets all night until the tube opened at some
ungodly hour in the morning to take us back for a few hours sleep!
And what a day we had ahead of us.
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| Regent Sound Studios in 2009 |
Early
on the Saturday afternoon we lugged our couple of amps and the drum
kit into the very small, but thrilling, Regent Sound Studios. I
recall the small outer waiting room, a fairly small studio with egg
boxes on the walls and a control room somewhere at the back. It was
some relief to find there was a piano, but I imagine most studios
must have had a piano in those days before keyboards became portable.
There were two men running the place, one took charge as both
engineer and producer, the other stayed quietly in the background.
We hoped to record two songs of our own, so we cracked on with
setting up and tuning, after all, an hour was pushing it – even
before I started breaking strings! Playing lead on an acoustic meant
that strings were a constant problem for me. I was learning the art
of attacking strings and bending notes and, although my fingers were
getting the knack of it, the bridge on my guitar wasn’t having any
of it. If the G didn’t break, it was the top E.
The
A Side (sounds quaint now) was “That Girl’s No Good”, a very
strong Beatle..ish ballad which John had written and was singing the
main vocal on. Any remaining time was to be spent on “That’s
Love”, a more upbeat song of mine. Not only did I have to sing the
lead vocal, I also had to play a lead guitar break in the middle, and
there was no time for retakes. Before we got anywhere near that
point, the first E string broke and with shaking hands I put my last
one on and prayed. As is the way of things, just as we got ready for
That’s Love, the second, and last, E string broke.
The
producer was fantastic. Knowing we were in trouble and about to
forfeit studio time, he came to our assistance. With only a little
hesitation, he took us to a store room in the back which was full of
amps, drums and guitar cases and informed us that the gear belonged
to the Rolling Stones. He opened a guitar case containing a pale
green Gretsch, which he said was Mick Jagger's, and told us not to
tell anyone. At first I didn’t want to even touch it, I was
completely in awe. It looked brand spanking new, shone like you
wouldn’t believe and seemed just too precious to play. It was
probably a good thing at that point that we didn’t have time to
mess about so I put it on and tried to figure out the controls. I was
in some sort of heaven for the next 15 minutes and we did the song in
two takes. Take 1 was for the actual recording, Take 2 the producer
had us standing around around a mic adding hand-claps! We’d done
it!! We had actually managed to load the gear in, set it up, record
two songs and get the gear out again, all in an hour. I still have
one of the very few acetate copies that were produced and I’m very
proud of it. The songs stand up very well and are typical of their
day but, not surprisingly, each has a minor mistake although I doubt
most people wouldn’t even notice them? And the day was far from
over......
As
we loaded the gear out the front Shaw Taylor (TV presenter) and Janie
Marden (renowned jazz singer of the time), were waiting to go in. As
we were getting ready to leave, the man who had been so quiet in the
background announced that he was from Decca and was very interested
in the group! We were sufficiently wordly-wise and cynical to be
highly suspicious of this approach but it soon became obvious that he
was quite genuine. Off we went to one of the local coffee shops where
he talked to us for, it seemed like, hours about our chances of
making it in the pop world with Decca’s backing. Between that
discussion and subsequent correspondence between Decca and the Army,
it was agreed that someone from Decca was to come to Bovington to
hear us playing live. If that went well, they were going to put us
on the bottom of a touring bill through our long summer leave period
and, if that went well, we were on our way to stardom! I can’t
recall if we had much say in the matter but it was arranged that we
would play a concert in the NAAFI club on the afternoon of a Summer
Open Day. The parents and relatives of the junior leaders were
somehow informed of this and a Decca A&R man could use the
occasion to decide if we had it in us to go on the road. Needless to
say my military ambitions, limited as they were at the time, took an
immediate back seat to my ambitions to be a pop star. Things went
downhill so fast that in the interim period I got myself demoted from
the lofty rank of Junior Lance Corporal to the lowly, but more
accurate, rank of Junior Trooper. I can't say I was bothered.
In
spite of the complete lack of atmosphere and the quizzical looks of
the adult audience (“it's too loud”, “I can't hear the words”
etc..), it was going OK when, right in the middle of a song, my first
string broke. It is very difficult to thread a string through the
hole in a machine head with a room full of old people (not to mention
the man from Decca) staring at you wondering why your hands, and
whole body, are shaking like someone in a fit, but I got through it.
In fact I got through the other three breakages as well and we were
doing OK until John decided to help Gray tune his guitar. Gray was a
good player but found guitar tuning very difficult, it was often
quicker to do the tuning for him than listen to him poncing about,
especially on this occasion. Even though we all knew that everything
was plugged into everything else, when John chose to hold onto his
mic stand and reach across to touch Gray’s guitar at the same time,
I’m sure he couldn’t have foreseen the outcome. All the same, it
was quite dramatic. There was a flash and John dropped to the deck
pole-axed!
Our
military training kicked in quickly and we started to panic. In the
hullabaloo I was nudging John with my shoe (some might call it
kicking) whilst at the same time reminding him forcefully that he
needed to get up because the man from Decca was still looking on
expectantly. Thankfully, someone had the presence of mind to phone
the emergency services. As the medics took John away in the
ambulance, the Mums and Dads drifted off muttering as they left. The
man from Decca thanked us but, in words that he probably thought were
kind, made it clear that he didn’t think we were ready for stardom
just yet. He did say he would see if there was anyone interested in
buying the songs. That was the last we ever heard from him.
We
weren’t aware at the time but John had a bit of a heart history and
the shock could have been more serious than it was. Thankfully, he
was back with us a few days later. In our individual ways, we all
had to come to terms with the fact that we had failed to impress on
the day. It was not only a big knock to our collective confidence,
we were very aware that an opportunity had been missed that was most
unlikely to ever be repeated. I dare say the camaraderie of military
life will have helped enormously with that process and what's more we
didn’t really have too much time to mope because the sergeants were
still shouting and swearing at us (their way of showing affection and
understanding), so we had to knuckle down to the business of trying
to be soldiers again. Shortly after all this I saw the Stones in
concert at Bournemouth Winter Gardens but the green Gretsch didn't
make an appearance. Nonetheless, it was one of the most fantastic
shows I've ever seen.
During
the next 9 months we all went separate ways to our adult units. I was
lucky and joined a regiment that supported and encouraged me in
forming and equipping groups throughout my military career, enabling
me to play pop, heavy rock and then modern country music in a variety
of group configurations. After the army I became an operations
manager at a local venue and was then very fortunate to become a
theatre manager. I still play in public once in a while but
concentrate on song writing and recording at home now. I’ve had
some degree of success, coming very close to getting songs on Joe
Brown’s Nashville session, dipping out at the eleventh hour. As
most people in my situation will recognise, it is easy to lose
self-confidence, so I was over the moon to be invited to take part in
a show on BBC Local Radio on Christmas Day 2011 with a live chat and
an airing of my latest song. I still get a thrill out of selling
even 10 of my own CDs and I have no thoughts of giving up on the
search for success somewhere in music.
It’s
a while now since I heard from John but as far as I know he still
plays and sings somewhere in the Liverpool area while working a day
job. I have just got in touch with Paul but no luck tracing Gray. But on a recent visit
to the West End for a show, my wife and I happened upon Regent Sound
Studios and the memories came flooding back. It still looks much the
same from the outside but is a guitar shop now – very fitting, it
should never be anything else. Plaques on the wall testify to it’s
place in the history of the Rolling Stones yet, strangely, there is
nothing to commemorate the Rythmn Runners!
I’m
quite certain that the other members of the group share the same fond
memories of that day in 1964 when our lives changed, if only for a
few months. Although we will never know, we probably had the best of
all outcomes; we never did have to find out if we could hack it in
the music industry, let alone if we were good enough. We never had
to suffer disappointment on the scale of those who become really
famous for just a short time. I often wonder how it must feel to
crash as fast as some pop acts do, how people cope when the phone
stops ringing and no one wants to know you any more, it must be
tough. By the same token, what if I hadn’t broken all those
strings and what if John had been a bit more health & safety
conscious? As I've said, we'll never know.
If
I have a real regret it is not being able to verify ownership of the
pale green Gretsch guitar. It is extremely rare to see pictures of
Mick Jagger playing a guitar, and he’s not returning my calls now
that I’m not famous.......
Bob
Bentley
