My Generation, the Glory Days of British Rock: private view / Theatre / People / V&A Channel

David Redhead, Producer, V&A Channel

Don’t people realise now what a massive event and institution Top of the Pops was in the 1960’s?

 

Jimmy Savile, DJ and Top of the Pops presenter

Worldwide, worldwide. It started as a thing from my radio show on Radio Luxemburg, which was called the Teen and Twenty Disk Club, and the BBC: ‘we’d like to make a television show of it but the title’s a bit long’, so I said, ‘what about Top of the Pops’? And they said ‘that’ll do’ and they never thought it would run for very long, because in those days pop music was a very, very poor relation, and only tolerated because BBC executives had children who would give them a hard time if there was nothing for them to watch. I did the very first one and the very last one.

 

Paul Gambaccini, DJ and Top of the Pops presenter

What happened was, I came here as a student in 1970 and I was at University College, Oxford, and the two shows that the students watched every week, because there was only one room with a television, it was the television room, and they were Monty Python and Top of the Pops, and I used to watch religiously never dreaming I’d one day be on it. And I was writing for Rolling Stone Magazine while doing it, and I went to do an interview with Roy Wood, who at that point was number one with ‘See My Baby Jive’, looking exactly like that [points to photo].

 

Terry Christian, writer and presenter

What was great about Top of the Pops was that it was full of juxtpositions. It was whatever was in the charts was on Top of the Pops. So whether it was James Brown or the Sex Pistols, or the Rolling Stones, or Petula Clarke, or Joe Daltry ‘Shut Up Your Face’, or any novelty record that happened to get into the charts, even people like Peter Sellers and things like that back in the sixties.

 

David Redhead

Well, Harry is from Manchester, or from that area. You’ve got a special relationship with him, havent’t you?

 

Terry Christian

Well, Harry’s just a bit of a legend, you know. I heard about Harry a few years back, be about five or six years ago now. There’s a barbers in Charlton called K-Style and John, I think that’s the guy’s name that cuts Harry’s hair, he had all these pictures up on his wall pinned up with drawing pins. You’re talking about thousands of pounds worth of pictures that people had never seen. But it’s just great for Harry because he is actually probably the greatest rock photographer of them all.

 

David Redhead

A job that required diplomatic skills. Who was the most difficult subject?

 

Harry Goodwin

Of the pictures? Didn’t like her photo being taken, well Dusty but she was a very good artist.

 

David Redhead

Dusty Springfield and Petula Clarke aswell?

 

Harry Goodwin

Well, Petula Clarke. They both could be a bit awkward…

 

David Redhead

So what’s your favourite picture here then?

 

Harry Goodwin

Favourite picture on the wall? It’s on the book, on the back cover of the book. Jimi Hendrix, a gentleman.

 

David Redhead

The one of him playing the guitar with his teeth?

 

Harry Goodwin

He said you’d get that in one go. He said, if you don’t get it in one go, push the kids out of the way, I’ll give you that from the back of the stage. I’ll come right down on one knee. You only get it one shot, if you don’t get it you’ll have to come tomorrow night. I said, I can’t afford to travel around the country. I’ve got no money. I didn’t get a lot of money on Top of the Pops. He understood that. He said, I’ll try my best. And he came down like that, and the hair, if that had got in front of the eyes it could have been anybody. So I panicked. When I got home I went and developed it straight away, and when I saw it I couldn’t believe it; I’d got it.

 

David Redhead

So, we have Pan’s People. We have Cheri, Didi, Ruth and Babs. A legend, a dance legend, here. It was all quite racy at the time, or was it…?

 

Pan’s People, Top of the Pops Dance Group:

Not all of it. Some of the costumes were rather lovely, in fact some of the fan mail was about the costumes, and people wanted to wear things for their wedding or their party or their twenty-first, or anything, so that was very nice.

The music was the crucial point. What the music said was what we danced to. So if the music happened to be a sexy piece, then it was a sexy dance routine.

 

David Redhead

What was your favourite kind of music? What sort of music did you like?

 

Pan’s People

Tamla Motown. Everytime at that time. Motown, yes. Because also, in those days, American groups didn’t come over to England, so Top of the Pops had to find some kind of substitute, and we were the substitute and used to dance to all the American songs.

 

David Redhead

We have Dave Munden from the Tremellos, Tom McGuinness from Manfred Man and McGuinness Flint and probably all sorts of other bands. Can you tell me a little bit about your memories of Top of the Pops?

 

Dave Munden

Well, there are too many to remember. I mean, the live sessions at Top of the Pops were actually some of the best ones, because we did one with Jimi Hendrix once and he did a soundcheck, and he didn’t need the rest of the band. It was just Jimi Hendrix on his own, but it was a fantastic atmosphere.

 

David Redhead

Of course, Manfred Man on Top of the Pops for probably about twenty years…

 

Tom McGuiness

Oh no, but we had a lot of hits in the sixties and we had three number ones, so we were on there quite a lot. To be honest it’s all a bit of a blur to me because we did do it so often a dyou’d fly up from London in the morning and fly back last plane out of Manchester airport at night. So, you know, who did I meet there? I dunno who I met, I probably met everyone. You know, Roy Orbison, The Yardbirds, The Stones, it was a strange thing because you either met them there or you met them at the Blue Boar on the M1 which was the only motorway service station in the country. Sort of one in the morning you’d walk in there and it’d look like the Top of the Pops canteen.

David Redhead

These pictures must bring back a few memories though, if you don’t remember it well.

 

Tom McGuiness

[Laughing]Well, Im intrigued; Harry Goodwin made five phonecalls to me in the last month saying ‘I hope you’re going to be there, Tom’. Where’s my photograph Harry?!

 

David Redhead

Well it’s probably tucked underneath his bed, as I believe most of his material is.

Harry is a very modest individual and he’s very modest about what he’s done here. What do you think makes these photographs special?

 

Alwyn W Turner (Author, My Generation: The Glory Days of British Rock)

I think this is the most extraordinary portfolio of rocknroll photographs I’ve ever seen. Nobody has this range this breadth of subject, there are people who specialize in the Rolling stones, they sepcialise in The Beatles or whawtever, nobody has ever taken this many photographs of this diverse a colletion of people because he photographed everyobody who was on top of the pops in a ten year period and everybody was on top of the pops in that ten year period. With the exception of Elvis, it is every single major rock artist in the entire world turned up at the BBC studios and Harry took their photograph. It’s extraordinary.

 

David Redhead

What’s your abiding memory of the whole top of the pops era.

 

Jimmy Saville, DJ and Top of the Pops presenter

Girls, wonderful. I’m a single fella still and so when I close my eyes and I think of “It’s number one! It’s Top of the Pops!” Oh! Wonderful.