Bob Bell's Pub Memoirs - This Time in Tune With His Early Music Career
Two London Pubs
And the beginnings of my life in the music business.
I spent the summer of 1965 hitching around the West Country, in celebration of finishing my A levels, leaving school and in anticipation of leaving home for good. I did return to Winchester after these travels, to my home of eighteen years, and was greeted with the inevitable… “Wonderful to see you home again, Rob. What are you going to do about getting a job?”
Ah yes, that unfortunate business of earning a living. How tiresome. My dad, a clockmaker, horologist and dealer in antique clocks and watches, knew how passionate I was about music, and somehow or other, arranged for me, through his bank manager, an interview with one Leslie Perrin, some music biz guy in London.
Dad went to London regularly, to auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and so the interview with Mr Perrin was scheduled to coincide with the next sale at Sotheby’s. The day came, we drove up together, and Dad dropped me outside the music man’s offices, and we arranged to meet up at the end of the day to go back to Winchester.
Leslie Perrin was what used to be called a Press Agent, a publicist in today’s language. I had never heard of him, which wasn’t at all surprising as I was quite naive as to how the music business actually worked. I suppose the interviews had come about because of my previous two years taking journalism-related courses - press agency being hand in glove with journalism, although the linkage never occurred to me at the time. I found out later that Mr. Perrin was the publicist for The Rolling Stones and many other major acts. In short, a very heavy hitter.
God knows who Mr. Perrin saw before him that day, but I imagine a youth besotted with Rock and Roll and Blues who didn’t seem to have the faintest clue about actually earning a living. I think he realised that I was more into music than writing, and he ended the interview suggesting I look for a job in music publishing, which in hindsight was tremendously sound advice, publishing being where the real money was, and still is, in the music business.
An hour later I was back on the street, with the best part of the entire day ahead of me. I pondered Mr. Perrin’s advice. Although I loved music, I knew I wasn’t much of a musician, and thought that might be a hindrance in music publishing. Oh, how little did I really know! Nevertheless, I did know I really dug records, and so in one of those casual and unthinking moments when life-changing decisions are made with no aforethought whatsoever, I went to a phone box, and impulsively dialled the number for Island Records, a small company who had a Rhythm and Blues label called Sue Records, and asked if there were any jobs going.
They were, indeed, looking for someone. And so it was that I arrived at 108 Cambridge Road in Kilburn, which was a shop converted into offices and met with David Betteridge, who I later learned was known to one and all as DB. I was ushered into his office - a large table around which sat his secretary Pat, and the fellow who ran Sue Records, Guy Stevens. David was looking for a van sales rep to start work immediately. Such a job obviously entailed the minor necessity of possessing a driver's license, which was a bit of a problem as I had never driven anything in my life. Can't be THAT difficult, I thought and airily told David that I didn't actually have my license yet, but was learning, and expected to get it any day now. Surprisingly, he said 'OK, start on Monday. We'll start you out on the route in a week or two when you pass your test.'
And so started my association with Island. I started in the stores, which was in the basement and was the former studio of Planetone Records, the first Jamaican owned record company in the UK, started by Sonny Roberts, a sweet man whom I got to know over the following years. Presiding over the stores was a chap about my age named Tim Clark, and we swiftly became friends.
Ska was still king in 1965, and although it had, in the main, been very alien to me when I first joined the company, (very few West Indians in Winchester in the early sixties) it didn't take long to foster a very deep appreciation. I could see the parallels to American blues and R & B in that the music was promoted and sold to a minority populace, and flew mainly under the radar of what was presumed to be popular culture. I dug the small labels, and I spent much time checking out the back catalog and marvelling at the biblical language that resonated through the titles, and the strange argot in which the tunes were sung. It was mysterious, and the mystery was deepened by the odd rhythms and wild harmonies.
Next door to Island’s office was a pub called The Shakespeare, and we ended up there most evenings after work. It was, like most of the neighbourhood, a run-down place, dark and smokey, peopled by working-class Londoners, whose accents were so different from my native Hampshire folk. It was a typical London pub, high ceilings, mahogany bar that told tales of long lost affluence, and a friendly but harassed bartender with a towel, for drying glasses, across his shoulders. Possibly not the most hygienic arrangement, but nothing that would have bothered unwitting youths like ourselves. Tim and I would be joined by other Island staff, such as Tom Hayes and Bob Glynn, the two London van salesmen, and sometimes DB, who would chide us in a fatherly way about the amount of beer we all drunk. Tim and I were invariably broke, and we found that the little cafe across the road, Peg’s Cafe, a greasy spoon of unparalleled squalor, would actually let us eat on tick during the week. Come Friday, payday, we’d cross the street and settle our accounts. By the following Tuesday, we’d be back on tick again.
It became obvious that the fortunes of The Shakespeare were not a lot better than ours. Their stock of beer seemed to get smaller and smaller, and a general air of poverty seemed to pervade the place. To our surprise one evening, after one of us made the astonishing discovery that neither of us had enough to pay for the beer we had just ordered, the bartender waved off our discomfort. “Don’t worry mate, just pay me when you get paid on Friday.”
And so it was that Tim and I would, on Friday’s, settle up with Peg at lunchtime, and at the close of the day, settle up over at the Shakespeare. And start new tabs again the following week. I’ve never before, nor since, known a pub extend credit like that.
It was during those Cambridge Road days that I attended my first recording session. Chris Blackwell hired the function room at the Marquee Club to host the taping of a comedy LP by Charlie Hyatt. For a few days before, I had been riding around London on a 50cc Suzuki, the property of Millie Small. Millie who had sold a lot of copies of 'My Boy Lollipop' and later 'Sweet William' on Fontana, (Islands early pop issues had come out on Fontana, an imprint of Phillips), had been given the bike by a fan, but she never used it. After a couple of learning mishaps, I had got the hang of the machine, and rode it to the Marquee, as David had asked me to get there early and 'organise' the drinks and refreshments so that when the invitation-only audience arrived they would have immediate access to a tipple.
I found that organising drinks was right up my alley, and had a glorious evening. Long John Baldry was playing the Marquee that night, with his band Steam Packet, which included Rod 'The Mod' Stewart and I think, Julie Driscoll. I oscillated between the two rooms, checking out the British R & B and the mainly - to me - incomprehensible speech of Charlie Hyatt. Whatever it was that he was saying, it was obviously uproariously funny, and I staggered about in tears.
I arrived at the office around 10 am the next morning, red-eyed and hungover. “Rob Bell!” bellowed DB. “Where the fuck's Millie's motorbike?”
Oh shit, I thought. The bike. Forgot all about that. I rushed down to the Marquee, but of course, it was gone. It did turn up, a week or so later, a little bent, but still working. I'm pretty sure Millie never knew.
Tim and I were let go the following May, as Island went through a lean period, and by the time I rejoined the company in late summer of 1968, the company had moved to Neasden, into a building called Music House. The entire Kilburn area was slated to be demolished and completely redeveloped. Peg’s and the Shakespeare are now naught but fond and sadly fading memories of a life and a district long gone.
The new pub of choice was the White Hart, just down the end of Neasden Lane and a very short walk from Music House. Music House was a long undistinguished building that was home to Island Records and Beat & Commercial and the two companies' joint enterprise, Trojan Records. That the building was undistinguished relates to its architecture only. These days it is iconic in the lore and legend that has grown up around Trojan Records - the company that really introduced the world at large to reggae. And of course, just like Cambridge Road, the area around Neasden Lane has also been extensively torn down and rebuilt, so that today not a trace is left of Music House.
The White Hart is still there, and judging from the photos I can see online, doesn’t appear to have changed much. Back then most of the staff at Music House would meet up after work for a pint or two, the Island coterie sticking together, and the B & C crowd doing the same. I had transferred over to Trojan by 1969, and sort of floated between the two camps, but it seems as if the Trojan and Island folks were most of the time indivisible. Tim and I were both doing similar jobs. He was Production Manager for Island, and I was the same for Trojan. Both jobs entailed getting records mastered and pressed, labels and jackets designed and printed. He dealt mainly in LPs, and me in 45’s. We were both eternally harried - the jobs were very high pressure. He had a few LP issues per month, I had literally dozens of 45 releases, probably an average of 12 a week. If one was on the charts, it was essential to not go out of stock - if you did, tens of thousands of sales would be lost per day. And DB would get very, very cross.
The end of the day at Music House would be signalled by a query from someone, ‘Fancy a pint?’ The answer was usually so obvious and predictable that no words would be necessary, an affirmative facial expression would be all that was needed. By six-thirty, the bar, a large and spacious lounge - we were going up in the world - would be occupied by twenty or thirty folks from Music House, guys from the Island stores, the Island sales office, West Indian employees of B & C’s Musicland chain of record shops, a mad potpourri of enthused music fans, discussing the new tunes, speculating on the future releases to come, reminiscing about past glories, Tim and myself contemplating the utter impossibility of our jobs, and simultaneously rejoicing at our incomprehensible successes in the face of the complete unpredictability of knowing both the future and the possible reaction of DB to some inevitable and hideously expensive cockup.
The White Hart had the distinction of being the venue for the first live reggae record. The pub had a function room to the side, and I hired it for an evening. Vic Keary of Chalk Farm studios brought in mobile recording equipment, and several bands and visiting Jamaican artists were invited. I was really excited about the event - no-one had done a live LP before, so it was to be a historic evening. Indeed, as the date of the event drew nigh, I was invited to go to Jamaica on Trojan’s behalf - a trip I usually would have jumped at - but turned it down because I thought the live record was more important. The bands were The Rudies, The Cimmarons, and the singers included Bruce Ruffin, Dandy Livingstone, Nicky Thomas, Delroy Wilson, The Pioneers and Slim Smith.
It was a great night, marred only by interminable set changes - in hindsight, I should have hired a stage manager, but having never organised anything like this before, I was blissfully unaware of the potential problems and hazards.
To say I was a bit underwhelmed when listening to the tapes at Chalk Farm a few days later is an understatement. The music didn’t come over with all the urgency we had perceived on the night. Listening to the music over fifty years later, it does seem to have improved with age, but I still remember the disappointment of that first listening compared to the excitement of the night. I guess it was really my first and very real introduction to what producing music in record is all about. It doesn’t always come out right the first time.
We put the record out eventually, but to use a phrase coined by writer Bill Millar: “It fell stillborn from the presses…”
But it was the first live reggae LP. Recorded at one of my favourite pubs.
