'WICKED STORY'

by Mick Taylor

By now I think we've all heard enough about 'the swinging Sixties; but personally speaking, it was a BLAST! I think to really  appreciate the 60's you had to be around before hand. I was born in 1950 in Doncaster, York's and one of my lasting memories of then, was how drab everything seemed to be. Not much colour. Our estate was made from grey concrete 'pre-fabs' thrown up during the war. Factories, pits and slag-heaps were all black, even the few cars around were black. Another thing was that every kid was in a gang, even the older guys. Teddy boys (my brother) Spivs, Rockers, Beats (niks) and Trads etc.
I don't recall much happening until about 63 when everything seemed to explode! Led by the Beatles, by 64 every kid in England was in a beat group. I started work in 65 and by now a new culture was spreading up from London, the Mods. There were Mod groups popping up all over, (and despite what Pete Townsend says) it was the Small Faces who led the way. The word was spread throughout the land by a TV show light years ahead of it's time called  Ready,Steady, Go. The show would feature the best dancers, smartest kids, best looking chicks and the BEST music (mostly unheard of Black American R&B and Soul). All over the U.K gangs of devotees were hanging out in coffee bars, youth clubs and bowling alleys, forming 'In crowds'.
To be 'In' you had to be different. By any means, clothes , transportation (with as much chrome as possible) dancing, attitude, music. Image was paramount and we all tried to emulate John Steed (of the Avengers T.V programme). Things seemed to change weekly and the only way to keep 'In' was to hitchhike down to London as often as possible, hanging around Soho, going to the Marquee or Tiles night clubs and usually ending up at a transport cafe by a large roundabout sign-posted Hatfield and the North (is it still there?). Two places were popular in Doncaster at the time,'The Disc' (discotheque) was a small room in the Excel bowling alley, with purple lights, minute dance floor and a juke box cranking out 'You really got me' - Kinks, 'Carra-lin' - Strangeloves, 'Woolly bully' - Sam the Sham, 'She's about a mover' - Sir Douglas quintet. We would be packed in, all doing the same 'in' dance. This feature would stay with us wherever we went. The ULTIMATE was to invent a dance (or nick one off the black groups) and have everyone copy it. The other venue was the newly opened Top Rank where the D.J was only too happy to play your records.
My thing was LP's If a single was hot, I'd order the album (I always got a kick out of watching the reaction to my requests): "I'd like to order the latest LP by Garnett Mimms and the Enchanters please", "WHO!" would be the reply, "Geno Washington and the Ram Jam band",  "WHAT!" was the response.  So to meet my unusual requests out would come the Schwann catalogue. In fact,some 15 years after leaving home I went back for a visit and met our old next door nieghbour, Mrs Prosser. Incredibly, she asked me if I "still listened to all that black-men's music"!!.
Not far from Doncaster was Sheffield where I went to the polytech. Here I found 2 of the most influential places, a record shop called Violet Mays which was full of Jazz, Soul, R&B albums. The other was an all night dance club called the King Mojo. This was run by (soon to be famous) Peter Stringfellow and his brother Geoff. This was the consummate Mod venue, small, exclusive, playing the best records and featuring the best live acts like Edwin Starr, Garnett Mimms, Ike and Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder as well as cool white groups like Zoot Moneys Big Roll Band. The idea though was to check out as many clubs as possible and each weekend frantic travel arrangements were made.
By this time most of us were 17-ish which meant that scooters were out and cars were in. The only kids left riding scooters, were the poor sods who had bought brand new TV 200's or SS180's and still had payments to make. So off we went in our mohair suits and pants, Fred Perrys, Shermans, brogues, desert boots, Polaroid's and college scarves. Carrying B.E.A or B.O.A.C flight bags (ultra cool). The chicks in their full-length leathers and suede's, looking like Mary Quant or Biba models, reeking of 'Brut for Men' and 'Estee Lauder' all of us armed with the appropriate   'medication' (pills). 
All the places were small, 2-300 people, the air hot, humid, the faces all familiar, the music rarely slowed and never stopped (the total effect was incredible, and I always had this feeling of being completely immersed in the music). If a song  was unpopular, we would stop dancing and the disc would be thrown on the floor to be trampled!!. This pleasant state of affairs lasted for many months, but by towards the end of 67 things were changing. Sgt. Pepper and the west-coast groups were taking off, the Mojo was closed, soul music topped the pop charts and the term 'mod 'applied to everything! However, some of us were having too good a time to stop and moved from club to club relentlessly.Nottingham, Leicester, Bradford, Castleford, Leeds, eventually ending up at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester. This is where things really began to change. Faces, fashions and in particular the music. Less Motown and Atlantic (now Stax) and more obscure groups but who sounded like Motown and Stax. Some were very good, some were rotten!! The D.J was in one room and the stage in another, so if a record was not liked, it was too bad! I always felt that D.J played records to please himself rather than the crowd (the opposite to Stringfellow) and that records were played more for their 'rarity' value. This in itself was something new, records which were impossible to find. Some I recall were:  'Discotheque' - Chubby Checker. 'Let the good times roll' - Bunny Sigler (me and a mate, Ivan hitched down to a tiny little shop called Soul City Records in London to get copies on the French Odeon Label)  'She's looking good' - Roger Collins. 'What's wrong with me baby' - Invitations (my favourite Wheel record) 'Baby reconsider' - Leon Haywood all these changes plus the fact that Manchester was far away over the Pennines (usually fog-covered) contributed to the end of the all-nighter scene (for us anyway) and it went from once a week, to every other week, to only when somebody good is on (Jnr Walker,Oscar Toney, Ben E King)
My own final memory of an all-nighter was listening to a mate, Tom Slieght, play a record he had just bought (on a Disc-a-Tron mobile 45 player) in the car park, just down from the Wheel. 'Wear it on our face' - Dells. I did my usual and ordered the album ('There is'). Records from the U.S.A took 3-4 weeks and by the time it arrived, the scene was over (I never did pick it up!) I sold all my L.P's (gave them away, more like!) moved to London and bought an album 'Walking in space' - Quincy Jones and lost my soul. However, all was not lost. I took a trip to Buffalo N.Y about 10 years ago and thumbing through some $3.00 bins, I came across an album that I had in 65, 'Uptight' - Stevie Wonder. For pure nostalgia I bought it, played it and BANG! off we go again! Soon I was going to every second-hand store, getting lists, going to every convention, collecting all the stuff  I'd given away. After a break of some 29 years, I'm going to an all-nighter in Las Vegas co-organised by John Smith, who is from Doncaster, the same age as me, knows all my mates and went to all the same clubs at the same time!
Don't you just love a happy ending?