Ex pro-boxer and doorman-cum-manager of the famous Star Club in the red-light district of the Rheperbaum, he took the pre-Fab Four/Five and many others like them under his close protective wing.
He took on one hell of job however, with these rampaging youngster's, who in most cases - for the first time ever - were living and working miles away from their comfortable Liverpool homes. Playing their hybrid music in a strange country, coping with a language they could not speak and an evironmental culture-shock to shock forever, the pioneering musicians were certainly glad of Horst's caring presence. Their guiding light through a most personal and vulnerable time.. that's the man - Horst Fascher.
New content will feature bands who didn't make the November 2011 deadline, recently submitted pics of existing bands together with posters, business cards and a shed-full of other fab stuff..
'OUT LATER THIS YEAR..'
! NOW !
ON SALE - ON LINE
Click-on Book Face..
Courtesy of The Lancashire Evening Post www.lep.co.uk
Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to all who purchased copies of my book 'Rock-n-Roll Fever - Blackpool In The 60's'. Everything to date has been successful...(Still got a few to sell at Waterstones 01253-296136 - tell your friends they will make a nice Xmas present for some 'Old' R&Roller).
I am looking for more info in regards to the Picador Club itself. I am working on another project about the Picador Club. I need to make contact with anyone I missed first time around. Any bands or musicians that may have some knowledge of the Picador and its workings...the owners and bands that played there - plus any photo's of bands from that period the early 60's. If you know of anyone please tell them to contact me at the numbers below.
My name is Pete Shelton. I've just had a new book released called - Rock-n-Roll Fever - Blackpool In The 60's..
The book is about rock 'n roll and the musicians who, for many years in the late 50’s and 60’s, entertained the Blackpool public. Very dedicated to their cause — some hopeful of, and achieving the ultimate goal, stardom - some just hopeful, but dedicated nonetheless..
Preston drummer Phil Eaves has seen a rock 'n roll life that looks both ways.. Or if you like; he's seen it - and had his hands on it - with life valuable experiences from both the musician's point of view and the club promoter managements side of things.
As a founding member of The Centurions in 1963 his first book Xtabop - A Preston Rock Profile - was written 1992 and has been a popular local best seller ever since. Real and earthy - and at 78 pages - an atmospheric sixties rock and roll journey from the then - right up to the here and now - well almost now. Meticulously profiled, Phil’s black and white portraits and posters tell the story of his distant musical beginnings across nearly 50 years of gigging and teaching the crafts of the rock and roller’s drum kit, to owning an operating Preston’s Amethyst Club located in an alleyway off Fishergate called the Old Cock Yard.
In 1969 to 1973 Phil opened the Amethyst Club. His own band Isambard Kingdomlaunched the very first session with Jerusalem Smith in support. Phil says, "It had no bar and some serious competition from the early years of club Disco's - or Discotheque's as the were first known. But we provided the early days heavy blues rock scene and we eventually had a membership touching on 1500."
Xtrabop at £5 and Amethyst Nights at £8 are obtainable direct from Phill Eaves..pjeaves@hotmail.co.uk
"Most - if not all of the groups from Manchester to Liverpool played in the dancehalls in Halifax during the great years. Volume Two tells the story - illustrated with over 1500 adverts, photographs and tickets from the 100's of dances that groups played at from 1957 - 1969. Great times, great days and the book's bring it all back to life!" says author Trevor Simpson.
Trevor’s second book continues to tell the story of how the town of Halifax UK, miraculously played host to over fifty number one artists in the decade of the sixties. With over 260 pages, this full colour printed soft back book concentrates on the three major dancehalls of the town which attracted bands from the length and breadth of Britain, as well as all the local groups.
This second instalment features, amongst many others, Herman's Hermits, The Kinks, Clarence 'Frogman' Henry, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and virtually all of the Joe Meek roster of artists. In addition, there is a full biography illustrated by unpublished family photographs of Champion Jack Dupree who lived in Halifax throughout the 1960’s.
SMALL TOWN - BIG BOOK
Review..
"I f you want to read a definitive and true reflection of what went on up and down the country on Saturday nights way back from the late fifties onwards.. then look no further - this is it.
Capturing British pop-power at it's local best, Trevor Simpson's wonderfully illustrated book Small Town - Saturday Night let's you browse into a touring netherworld of who-was-who in UK show business and at the same time informing the reader where these famous acts plied their basic but essential, bread and butter musical trades. Major artistes of the day
'needed' to travel extensively to earn a daily crust so for the small town of Halifax read.. Nelson or St Helens.. Wigan or Blackburn.. Leigh or Preston as a simple way of illustrating rock 'n roll's musical connections to many a far flung place.
Local bands proliferate here together with the big-band scene of the late 1950's. Listed too are visiting groups who traipsed over the Pennines from Lankyland on their daunting trip's across the foreboding Saddleworth Moor for a fraction of the fees the big guns were paid and.. there was no M62 back then either. The Beat Boys, The Answers, Ways & Means, The Magic Lanterns, The Atlantics, The Cymerons and The Blues Set backing Screaming Jay Hawkins - amongst many others - are all listed as playing the main Halifax ballrooms.
This weekly scene made for a truly amazing sociological musical mix which was replicated a hundred times the length and breadth of the country. ST-SN makes the feel-good-factor bubble in your heart. These times were unforgettable and along side it - so is this book.
As unashamedly parochial this book might be - ST-SN is a 'national' historical treasure and true chronological archive. The book also unintentionally sets a challenge to all the other small townships touched by these once-in-a-lifetime events. 'All this happened in your own back yard too - So where are the local books where you can read all about it?' A real must read.. which ever side of hill you might live."
Bill Hart: February 2010
The proceeds of the books so far have raised around £10,000 for the local Hospital Radio which is in its 30th year.
If ever I managed to write a Beatles book I would title it:
ALL MY UN-LOVING..
NO! Please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I personally un-love the Beatles - far from it - I luv 'em to bits. It's just that I would need to give 'my' book an extra chance of being noticed amongst the 2000 or so Fab Four books written so far and make more money out of it without getting lynched too often by Beatles fans.
This is what I suspect has happened here with Liverpool born Gary Hall's 2006 book: Living life Without Loving The Beatles. It is different, it is well written, it is amusing, it is quirky, it is long winded and I'm so glad that I was luckily enough to have borrowed it from the local library and didn't buy it.
Gary Hall however, really does hate the Beatles: Well, not so much the boys in themselves but certainly the mythology created around them. He doesn't much like their version of pop music either - preferring real pop music made by Brittany Spears!
Evidently, it is more the peddling from the mighty machine behind The Beatles
from which he thinks - 'we have all been un-mercilessly duped' - that he mainly complains and, about the seven key stereotype fan group's it has created along with it - most of whom in his eyes are to be avoided - or challenged back as harasser's - whoever the well-meaning, perceived head basket's might be.
It is after all about personal musical taste's and like the old Morris Minor - when seeing one on the road nowadays - invokes heavy nostalgic pause's of long-lost glories from grown men about the golden era of the 1950's and 60's; but all the same it's still a bit of a mediocre motorcar. In essence this is what his book is about.
If Gary Hall had really wanted his book to stand out from the pack however, it would have been healthy indeed to take some professional advice about its bland negative title. I say to him - tell it like it is Gary; which you do so well - inside the book. But this time positively re-title it and re-package it - just as the 'Beatles' have done with their products (about which you moan relentlessly) - by calling your book perhaps; "The Beatles Are Quyte Shyte."
Now that title should sell you a few more copies and so too exponentially increase the size of the lynch mob looking out for you. Bill Hart: January 2011
THE ACE CAFE
£14.95 £29.95
The full history thrills and spills of The Ace Cafe
Forty years ago, swarms of motorcyclists roamed along London`s North Circular Road in nightly 'burn ups`. They were the ton-up boys, coffee-bar cowboys.. the Ace boys. This is their story, related by those who raced and the policemen who chased them, woven against a background of contemporary reports of escapades, accidents and deaths..
"What this book doesn't need is another superlative accolade!
But it's getting another huge one from me!"
'AB FAB'
Bill Hart: August 2010
Plug Inn Vols 1 & 2
Tony Bolland
"There have been many great books written about Merseyside’s biggest export ‘Music’ especially the 60’s and the 80’s. Tony Bolland is the first to write a book about the ’Forgotten Years’ the 70’s and along with Bill Harry, Sam Leach, Spencer Leigh & Paul Du Noyer who continue tell the stories and keep the lamplight burning for this never ending industry.
The Plug Inn Volume 2 is Tony’s Bolland's sequel to his already popular and successful 'Plug Inn Volume1'. The book is about the music shop of the same name and its importance in the history of popular music."
"A new revised book by Steve Chapples 'Goin' Down Th'Imp' is available now for all those regulars at the Imperial Ballroom, Nelson who would like to go back in time to the 50's, 60's, 70's.
All the top stars of the day would end up there sooner or later.. The Beatles.. The Rolling Stones.. "
"Take a trip back to the early 'Beatles' gigs with a wonderfully portrayed insight into venues The Fab 4 & 5 played.. well before their heady Hamburg days..
The book's title - 'The Sound With The Pound' - is a play on the words 'sound as a pound', allegedly coined by Bob Wooler the original Caven Club DJ. Bob; famous for not just being the original Cavern Club DJ, but for saying such things as 'Welcome to the Cavern Club - we're the best of cellars'. The famous DJ coined many other phrases too - and this one is used most effectivly - if slightly altered - to suit the book.
Setting the tone brilliantly for German born Manfred Kuhlmann anthology of the 60's Mersey Beat Groups, it catalogue's the young 1960's musician's quest in his optimistic search for his very own pot of fiscal gold.
Meticulously researched over the last ten years, it covers every Merseyside band he can possibly find to ruminate about and many more Lanky Beat one's too. Changes in line-up were fast and frequent in those days with many attempting to find the magic formula which would send them rocketing to stardom as The Beatles and the many other's had done before them.
They say to produce a new David Beckham you need ten thousand wannbe kids to select from. It was exactly the same here - except instead changing football strips these lads were changing guitar strings. Brightly factual with knobs-on.. a good bedtime read.
Bill Hart: September 2010
Manfred with Bill Hart
I met Manfred Kuhlmannn a couple of months ago along with Alan Parkinson. His is a great book and full of detail. He has spent years researching everything. He actually phoned both me and Alan from Germany. A very nice sincere man. Wish I had been with you.
A man on Liverpool mission.. that's Brian Holden. Still in the research stage with his intended book, he shows his portfolio of some of his many record lables discovered thus far. Not far away too is Brians book launch - so stay tuned to LANKY BEAT for further news and so to - a book review from me.
Bill Hart: September 2010
Eric Woolley selects an elite of 42 from the many other Liverpool band's on the rock 'n roll trail in the early sixties. Here he highlights how Lonnie Donegans Skiffle inspired musicians competed with Jazz and then transformed themselves into 'Merseybeat' - the new, world-wide musical phenomenon. Illustrated.
The Bluecoat Press
£6.99
Coming Soon..
UN-PUTDOWNABLES 2
A massive little epic..
for even bigger kids..
By Kikkatinkan
*A Slightly Divorced Man..
An Autobigraphical Compendium of a Nobody
By Roy Supwood
MERSEY~SOUND~WAVE
Mersey Sound: 50 Years On..
By Bill Hart
A unique artistic commemoration and celebration of the UK's greatest musical era of all time..
"Tomorrow is the day in which we pass through the Panama Canal. Today is the fifth day in which I have not eaten. I have decided to try to purify my body completely before I start my complex macrobiotic diet. I am on board my Trimaran Yacht 'Survival' in Panama. Three weeks ago we passed through the Panama Canal with my friends, George & Liz. I have been planning a round the world sail for many years now. In fact the memory goes back to my school days.."
