Elvis, Motown, the Surf Sound, the British Invasion, Psychedelia, Woodstock, Hendrix, Bob Dylan and The Monkees. All set against the backdrop of a new permissiveness, Free Love and a war we couldn’t win. Turn on, tune in and drop out . . .
In Britain we had The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Merseybeat and Pirate Radio, but we also had Freddie & The Dreamers, Acker Bilk and Ken Dodd! - The golden decade of British music.
The Sixties started without a bang! If rock fans expected the new decade to bring fresh excitement they were in for a big disappointment because we were waist-deep in the soggy middle ground between rock & roll and The Beatles, who at this point were about to visit Hamburg for the first time, having just completed a lacklustre tour of Scotland backing Johnny Gentle!
In the company of Vince Eager, Dickie Pride, Duffy Power and his biggest acts Tommy Steele and Marty Wilde, Johnny Gentle was a transitory inmate of Larry Parnes’ “Stable of Stars” - all of whose names were said to have been selected as an indication of their sexual characteristics! Gentle was destined to remain in obscurity.
In America, no pretenders had threatened Elvis Presley as King of Rock & Roll. The month after his army release in March 1960, Stuck On You bolted to Number One to be followed by It’s Now Or Never and Are You Lonesome Tonight? later in the year.
In London the first rock groups began to emerge, but most of them sounded pretty weak and unimaginative compared with the Americans. Some even had hits: Nero and The Gladiators experienced five minute stardom with Entry Of The Gladiators and In The Hall Of The Mountain King. Shane Fenton and The Fentones scored with I’m A Moody Guy and Mike Berry and The Outlaws found favour with Tribute To Buddy Holly - an early success for independent producer Joe Meek.
Eventually, the British pop scene of the Swinging Sixties was bursting with vocal groups, solo artists and instrumentalists. But at the outset, teenagers had to listen to the latest hits on the café jukebox or a basic record player. Their only other lifeline was a nightly dose of music from Radio Luxembourg or Alan Freeman’s Pick of the Pops on BBC radio on Sunday afternoons.
Then in 1964 came the offshore pirate radio stations - Radio Caroline and Radio London, which broadcast from ships anchored just outside British waters - but in 1967 the government closed them down as a risk to shipping. In the re-organization of BBC radio into Radios 1,2, 3 and 4, Radio 1 became the new station for pop music and ex-pirate DJs like Tony Blackburn and John Peel.
By 1964, for the first time in rock history, America was looking up to Britain, and the rampant Beatlemania at Kennedy Airport heralded a full-blown British Invasion.
I love 60s music. I did back then, I still do now and I probably always will. In the year I was born, The Shadows had a number one hit in Britain with an instrumental song called Kon Tiki. To this day, it is one of my favourite records.
My entire musical education was grounded in the Sixties. Our house always had music present, and an eclectic selection at that. Certainly I was exposed to the greats at an early age; Elvis Presley, Motown, The Beatles and the entire Merseybeat and British beat collection - but I also grew up with the music of Tom Jones, The Bachelors, Engelbert Humperdink, Shirley Bassey, Ken Dodd, Jim Reeves, Benny Hill (remember Ernie who drove the fastest milk cart in the west?) and Rolf Harris.
The curious counterpoint to such a rich outpouring of great rock & roll music in the 60s was a parallel boom in middle-of-the-road pop. So for every My Generation and You Really Got Me there seemed to be an equal number of drippy ballads selling in vast quantities, like Ken Dodd’s Tears, Val Doonican’s The Special Years and The Bachelors singing Marie.
So the soundtrack to my childhood was a curious mix of Soul music, British Beat, psychedelia, R&B, romantic schmaltz and records by British comedians, wholesome vocal groups, cheeky chappies, pretty girl singers and male heartthrobs who were also actors.