Of all the "first days of the rest of my life" that I have ever had, the day that I met Cliff Richard was by far the most significant. From that day on, everything changed.

We were moving at the speed of youth. It was April 1958, and by Christmas we had acquired a fan club, invented Cliff's name, played our first "big time" out-of-town gig (the Regal Ballroom, Ripley), been photographed backstage with Jerry Lee Lewis at Kilburn State, topped the bill twice at Shepherds Bush Gaumont, and found ourselves a professional booking agent (George Ganjou).

We had recorded a demo (probably the first rock 'n' roll demo ever made in Great Britain), secured a recording contract for Cliff and a songwriting contract for me. We had cut a hit record, performed for a month at Butlin's Holiday Camp, acquired a professional manager (Franklin Boyd), appeared on the hottest TV show going (Oh Boy!), cut another hit record (High Class Baby), added two new band members (Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch), and I had switched from lead guitar to bass.

We had undertaken a nationwide tour (with the Kalin Twins), made our BBC Radio debut on Saturday Club, and Cliff had been signed to appear in his first movie, Serious Charge.

Cliff Richard and the Drifters at Butlins Holiday Camp

Oh, I almost forgot . . we'd found a new bass player (Jet Harris) and I, with considerable reluctance but in deference to Jet's superior ability and experience, had been obliged to 'resign' from the group and become a full-time songwriter.

All that in just nine months . . . Phew!

There have been so many erroneous reports of the period leading up to the recording of Move It and what happened after that, that I decided to make an extra special effort to set the record straight. I was able, by phoning old friends, to establish what I think are essentially the true facts.

The day I first met Cliff was Thursday the 3rd of April 1958, and I played my first gig with him on the following Saturday. Coincidentally, a young lady named Jan Vane, who hailed from Rainham in Essex, was taken to the 2 i's that Saturday night by her boyfriend Eddie as a belated treat for her sixteenth birthday.

Never having been anywhere like the 2 i's before, she had the impression that if Cliff was playing there he must be famous. She stayed behind after the show and asked Cliff if he had a fan club. I don't know if Cliff thought she was serious, but he said, "Sammy, this is Jan Vane, she's gonna be our fan club secretary."

That's Jan Vane at left center, along with her sister and (l to r)
Ian, Terry, Cliff and Johnny Foster at Butlins

Well, of course she was very serious, and starting with a handful of members to whom she would personally write, she wound up running the official Cliff Richard fan club with a membership of well over forty thousand which required a full time staff of four; and it occupied most of her time for the next twenty years. She became a close friend of the band, and I'm happy to say is still a friend of mine to this day.

Right from the very first moment, Cliff, Terry Smart, Norman Mitham and Johnny Foster made me feel at home. Not only had I joined a rock 'n' roll band, I had also found a whole group of wonderful new friends.

Some groups come together because of the desires and ambitions of an individual. Some come together following the friendship of two people who then add on the necessary musicians to form a group. And some just come together by geographical accident; they happen to live in the same village or town or neighborhood of a city.

In our case the group began as a result of the friendship and mutual musical aspirations shared by Cliff and Terry Smart. They had been playing together in the Dick Teague Skiffle Group, but what they really wanted to do was play rock 'n' roll. Norman Mitham, being another one of Cliff's oldest friends (they were at school together), was the first one to be recruited. I just sort of volunteered out of admiration, enthusiasm and the group's obvious need for a lead guitarist.

Following those first few gigs at the 2 i's, I began travelling to Cliff's home in Cheshunt to rehearse, and to perform at local venues such as the 40 Hill Badminton Club, the Five Horseshoes Pub and the Tudor Hall in Hoddesdon.

Cliff's home, No. 12 Hargreaves Close was at the end of a very pleasant cul-de-sac on a rural council estate. Flowers grew in the gardens, and, by the time I arrived there, spring had sprung, the sun was shining and the birds were singing.

I fell madly in love with Cliff's sister Donella (who wouldn't, she was absolutely gorgeous). I can still see her lying on the floor in front of a Dansette record player, her dark hair in a pony tail, transcribing the lyrics from the records we had bought at a tiny record shop in Cheshunt High Street.

I was almost as much in love with Cliff's mum, Dorothy, who was not only vivacious, warm and friendly, but also a wonderful cook. For me, having spent the last two years on a diet of bland RAF grub, and having come from a somewhat conservative background in which my mother and aunts were all "cook from scratch" devotees of Mrs. Beeton's Victorian Cook Book, Dorothy Webb's curry was not so much a meal as an adventure.

To create her magical concoctions she would combine onions, chilies, sultanas, lemons, curry powder, rice and chicken or lamb. Sometimes she would even add hard boiled eggs neatly sliced in half. Life, you might say, was like a bowl of Mrs. Webb's curry; you never knew what you were gonna get.

And to wash it all down, what better than a glass of Tizer. I'm not sure if it was Cliff's invention, but it was Cliff who introduced me to the delights of the world's greatest non-alcoholic cocktail, Tizer and ice cream. I am sad to report that the great American public remain blissfully unaware of Tizer and ice cream, and settle instead for something called a "rootbeer float." And this from the nation that brought you Mickey Mouse and put a robot on Mars !

The first really significant event was the arrival on the scene of a dance hall manager named Harry Greatorex who came from the town of Ripley just a few miles northwest of Nottingham. He was a very pleasant middle-aged gentleman with wavy grey hair and rimless eyeglasses. He wore a trilby hat, a raincoat and was carrying a briefcase.

He had come to London in search of groups to appear at his Regal Ballroom and had naturally arrived at the 'Home of the Stars', the 2 i's Coffee Bar. That would have been on Thursday the 24th of April, 1958. He had enquired of Tom Littlewood as to who the best bands were, and Tom had told him about us. However, we were not due to appear until the following night.

On that Friday, we arrived early to set up and rehearse. Mr. Greatorex spoke with Johnny, and asked what our name was. He told him, "The Drifters." Mr. Greatorex suggested we use the lead singer's name as well (as in Tommy Steele and the Steelmen or Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps), but he felt that "Harry Webb and the Drifters" wasn't really suitable. Johnny said, "Fine," and immediately convened a band meeting at the Swiss Pub just a few doors down along Old Compton Street.

It was about six in the evening with the last rays of sunlight shining down through the pub windows. We sat at a long oak table in the dusty half light. I am not even sure if we ordered anything to drink we were all so excited at the idea of inventing a new name; not to mention the prospect of going all the way to Nottingham to perform.

It didn't take very long for us to come up with the name Cliff Richard. We rattled off various names such as "Russ Clifford, Cliff Russard," and finally Johnny Foster said, "Cliff Richards." And everybody said, "Great." And I said, "Why don't we leave off the 's'? That way people will naturally say Cliff Richards and we will be able to correct them. Then they will have heard the name twice and be more likely to remember it." The amazing thing is that to this day some people still make the same mistake.

We hurried out of the pub, all very excited, and immediately ran into Ricky Richards, a young photographer we had recently met. Cliff said, "Hi, Ricky, I've just stolen your name." Ricky is now Rick Hardy, and recalls that Cliff later signed a Columbia Records publicity photograph saying "To my pal Ricky, Sorry I pinched your name."

We returned to the 2 i's, and told Harry Greatorex the news. He rushed off to find a telephone so that he could call his local newspaper, the Ripley and Heanor News, and add the name "Cliff Richard and the Drifters" to the advertisement which would appear the next day. It was the very first time that the name "Cliff Richard" would appear in print!

Mr. Greatorex said that he would try to catch part of our set that night, but wouldn't be able to stay for all of it as he had to return to Nottingham by train. Whether he did come back or not I'm not certain. But at any rate, we had been booked for our first important gig away from London.

For it we were to receive the grand sum of five pounds for our performance plus ten pounds for expenses! There was, of course, no M1 motorway in those days, and even if there had been it wouldn't have made any difference because none of us had a car. The expenses were to cover our train fare.

The very next day (Saturday morning) we all went to the nearby town of Enfield in Hertfordshire to a small mens' clothing store which was known to stock pretty cool stuff. We were looking for shirts -- about the only thing we could afford at the time -- so that we would have at least some semblance of a group uniform for our upcoming appearance.

We found some silk shirts embroidered with gold thread stripes. They looked very American, very cool, very rock 'n' roll. We decided on white, but it turned out that they only had one white shirt in our size, so Cliff got that and Terry, Norman and I all got red ones. Johnny Foster, who, though he was the manager, was very much a part of the "gang," decided on the blue version.

He actually wore it once when we appeared at the Shepherd's Bush Gaumont. Johnny, having a deep bass voice, walked on stage to sing the introduction to our version of Get A Job by the American Doo-wop group the Silhouettes . . . "Dib dib dib dib dib Ba-doom," during the course of which Johnny lifted his arm with great enthusiasm and managed to create a huge rip under his sleeve. Two quid instantly down the drain. Such is the price of fame.

I guess it was about thirty-five years later that I found, amongst things which had been in storage since my mother passed away, my wonderful red shirt. Sadly, it turned out not to be silk at all. It was some peculiar type of man-made fibre, and what I had thought were embroidered gold threads had in fact been painted on with a roller.

I brought it back to America, and had it professionally drycleaned. It looked so good that I decided to give it to Cliff in the hope that it would raise some money for charity. I remember writing him a note suggesting that he place on it an auction reserve price of two pounds fourteen shillings and eleven pence ha'penny. The last I heard it had become part of an EMI Records exhibition to celebrate their 100th anniversary.

Saturday, the 3rd of May, 1958; the great day had finally dawned. We travelled the one hundred and twenty-odd miles to Nottingham by steam train from London's St. Pancras Station, about a two and a half hour journey. In those days long distance travel by rail, with a huge locomotive puffing billowy clouds of smoke as we chugged through the washing line filled back gardens of suburbia and on to the cow dotted pastures of rural England, was still an exciting and romantic adventure.

From Nottingham Station we had to travel the remaining few miles to Ripley on the local bus. We hand carried all of our equipment with us; guitars, amps, drums, stage clothes -- the lot. Johnny Foster was on hand to help out, but we had no roadies because roadies hadn't been invented yet. A pretty ignominious start to our first "big deal" out of town gig.

I remember sitting opposite a rather large lady clutching a wicker shopping basket filled with groceries. She regarded this somewhat disheveled guitar toting youngster with considerable suspicion. I tried hard not to look like the major threat to society that she obviously thought I was.

The truth is we were far from being rebellious. We were just glad to be alive and glad to be teenagers. Nobody had ever been a teenager before; the word had only recently come into existence.

Upon arrival things picked up a bit when we found that there was a poster announcing "Direct from the Famous Soho 2 i's Coffee Bar, CLIFF RICHARD and the DRIFTERS." Not exactly our name in lights, but it was a start.

Ah, Ripley -- city of nightlife and sin -- and there, right at the heart of it all, was that den of iniquity known to one and all as the Regal Ballroom; rumoured on occasion to stay open as late as (gasp) eleven p.m.! Not much chance of Cinderella losing her slipper in this particular pleasure palace.

In fact there was nothing regal at all about the Regal Ballroom. No chandeliers or sweeping staircases, no lords or ladies, no dukes or duchesses; and the closest thing to a prince (Charming or otherwise) was Cliff.

In fact, for a ballroom it bore a remarkable resemblance to a church hall. In his superb book about Cliff, The Biography, Steve Turner noted that it was "a converted snooker hall with a mock-Tudor front." The entrance was up a short flight of stone steps and through a set of swinging double doors.

I remember it being a rather dingy room with a well-worn wooden dance floor with wooden slatted benches, or perhaps church pews, lining the walls. To the right by the side of the stage was a small side room where you could buy soft drinks and bags of potato crisps. Anyone in search of something stronger would have to retire to the Rose and Crown across the street.

The best thing about the Regal Ballroom was the stage. It was located at the far end of the room, and was somewhat larger and slightly higher than the 2 i's stage. It also had something which the Drifters had never experienced before -- a theatrical curtain! It was made of a heavy reddish velvet material which had seen better days, and it parted in the middle, drawing to the sides rather than rising into the rafters.

I remember the excitement we all felt setting up behind that curtain; peeking out from behind it. I guess we were all a little nervous; the place was packed with teenagers who had paid four shillings apiece to get in. Finally when the curtains parted there was a tremendous roar of applause, and it seemed that practically everyone in the place had moved to the front. We launched into Twenty Flight Rock, and after that everything was just a blur.

One thing's for sure, the assembled crowd had never seen anything like it. Normally the dance hall featured either old-time dancing, skiffle or dixieland jazz and, sometimes during intermissions, a "top twenty record session;" but tonight rock 'n' roll had come to Ripley!

Looking back on it now, I think that night might have been the defining moment, the moment when Harry Webb truly became Cliff Richard. He in his white shirt, we in our red. We were the backup group, he was the star . . . and we were rockin.'

By the time we had finished our forty or so minute set we were hot and sweaty but far too excited to be exhausted. Curiously, I have no recollection of speaking to any members of the audience after the show. Neither do I recall anyone asking Cliff for an autograph. Hardly surprising; until that night no one had ever heard of him.

I suspect that after our performance (timed to be the climax of the evening) the audience, being the dutiful teenagers that they were, simply went home to bed. In any case, had they stuck around too long they would have missed their last bus home.

Recently, thanks to John Shawcroft, the current editor of the Ripley and Heanor News, I heard from one of his readers, Mr. John Chambers, who recalls, "I was at the Regal with my girlfriend (now wife) on the Saturday night Cliff made his appearance. At one point I remember Cliff saying, 'You are probably aware by now my idol is Elvis Presley -- we'd like to do his latest release for you, Won't You Wear My Ring Around Your Neck.' As soon as I could", said John, " I bought the record on 78, which I still have to this day."

Another reader, Janet Seviour, a resident of nearby Heanor, recalls going with her friends to see us at the Regal that night. She was just fourteen. Janet, now a very attractive fifty-something and still a Cliff fan, recalls "that handsome young man who wore black trousers and a white shirt."

Amusingly, John Shawcroft observes that while there were four hundred people estimated to have been at the Regal that night there are now four thousand who claim to have been.

Brenda Gillott, whose brother Brian Cheetham was an assistant to Harry Greatorex, remembers it well. "It was a fantastic night," she said. "It was like . . . ZOOM !!! We went wild!" Brian remembers that when we arrived he was sitting in the side room watching TV. "The first song you ever played at the Regal was for rehearsal just after you'd set up," he said. "It was Tutti Frutti. It made me jump up and leave the TV; I thought it was better than the original!"

He also remembers that after the show Harry arrived with a bottle of whiskey, and we all sat around celebrating. I don't remember that myself, but I guess that's what happens when you drink a glass of whiskey on an empty stomach.

Anyway, on that night in 1958 there had been no sound check, nor any need for one. There were no mixing consoles in those days; it was simply a matter of whether the microphone worked or not. That's microphone, singular. No mics for the drums; no mics for the amps. We also lacked monitors, footlights, follow spots, a dressing room, backstage refreshments and accommodation for the night!

Harry Greatorex probably didn't expect this big time rock 'n' roll group from London to arrive on a bus with no means of getting back home, and consequently had made no arrangements to put us up. Our budget certainly didn't allow for a hotel or even bed and breakfast, so we were obliged to spend a thoroughly uncomfortable night locked inside the club trying to sleep on the wooden benches until Harry and Brian arrived the next morning to let us out.

We emerged into the bright early morning sunshine bleary eyed and unshaven but ready to continue our quest for fame and fortune . . . or failing that, a plate of sausage, egg and chips and a nice cup of tea.

Cliff Richard and the Drifters had been born, but our first taste of the big time hadn't even included breakfast !

�

Next Chapter

Back to Main Page
Email Ray