THERE IS NO SADDER sight on television than watching the speed at which the teenage shows develop visual hardening of the arteries.

In my day youth used to be identified with an erratic and unpredictable change of mood, interest, fad, foible, passion.

If one can judge by the most popular TV proprammes, the teenagers of the 1960’s have been stuck in a one-taste groove like a baby dinosaur growing up in the ooze.

Pop music, if we are to believe the programme planners, is the all-consuming cultural interest of modern youth – and practically nothing else!

For almost four years the only evening programmes aimed at adolescents have been little more than public relations adjuncts of the record business.

Rhythm

Juke Box Jury, Top of the Pops, Ready, Steady, Go! Thank Your Lucky Stars, Gadzooks, It’s All Happening and Stramash! have not only reflected the need of teenagers stimulated by rhythm but they have exaggerated the relevance of that need into a gigantic lie.

Sociological historians studying this decade from the pages of the Radio Times and TV Times would have to conclude that in their formative years the young of the ‘sixties had only a minimal or negligible interest in films, the theatre, sports, polities, books, conversation, science, debate, serious music, travel, poetry, art or even love. Their sole relaxation appeared to be to shake in a large hall – usually on their own, mute and devoid of contact with the opposite sex – displaying neither enjoyment, passion nor involvement

Even more depressing is the bovine manner in which they have accepted the same formula, the same setting, the same atmosphere, the same jargon, even the same personalities, of these pop shows.

For the past few weeks I have been watching Ready Steady, Go! and Thank Your Lucky Stars and find that they are practically indistinguishable in mood and manner from what they were a year ago.

Stale

Ready, Steady, Go! has suffered worst from imaginative paralysis with artists introduced in the same way to the same platform to the same accompaniment of massed bodies gawking or jiggling.

What was once fresh, immediate and zestful has been allowed to stale into tired familiarity and predictable routine. The fact that it has gone “live” has coincided with the fact that it is really dead.

Thank Your Lucky Stars, too, has gelled into formula stuff, with the designers being the only ones called upon to be inventive. And there is more than a sign of desperation about some to be of their efforts. I thought last week the motif was traffic signs for drunken drivers.

Adulatory

The over-all tone is adulatory and non-critical with the comperes of both programmes vying with each other in their use of copy-writers’ adjectives.

Cathy McGowan of Ready, Steady, Go! now has a serious rival in Jim Dale of Thank Your Lucky Stars in the use of the word “fantastic.”

Last week’s show, according to Mr. Dale, had items which were great, fabulous, the best, tremendous, in addition to being merely fantastic. He asked the audience to give each of them “a great big hand.” Must the vocabulary of these shows really be so poverty-stricken?

Welcome

Against such an uninspiring background it is a relief to welcome the B.B.C.’s A Whole Scene Going. Although it, too, over emphasises pop music, it at least makes an intelligible effort to examine the phenomena and provide more than a fan club’s view of the performers.

When Pete Townshend, of The Who, admitted that his group had no musical quality and that he was baffled by the tastes and personalities of the fellow-members of his group, I felt a rush of honest fresh air into this pop formula for the very first time.

“In pop business, you know, we’re lucky there are no standards,” he said, and when someone in the studio pressed him about their sexual appeal, he bluntly replied: “Look, our group’s one of the most unglamorous on the stage.” One may resent the grammar, but not the sentiment.

Relevant

The inclusion of a letters’ column with various teen-age and older experts answering questions such as when a provincial girl should leave home and come to London, should a new pop singer get himself a manager, and what do you do about a boy friend who is constantly being mistaken for a pop star provided lively and relevant discussion.

The film montages on fashion are zippy and gay, while the introduction of other interests like sport, cinema and clothes is a welcome rebuttal of the libel that we are rearing an adolescent herd, brainwashed by pop alone.

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POP records are not only big business but a social phenomenon. There is little doubt that they are making a discernible impact in the shaping of the new Britain.

From being the squarest nation in Europe we are fast becoming the coolest. Foreigners familiar with the Britain of Victor Silvester and hunt balls are staggered by the transformation they find in the dancing seen in jazz clubs and discotheques.

The grace, the rhythm, the abandon – not to mention the improvement in the looks of the girls – have that sophisticated natural quality that one used to associate only with the more exclusive haunts in Paris, Manhattan and St. Tropez.

Barriers

More important, that ease and lack of restraint has begun to manifest itself in certain social side-effects among the young.

Class and racial barriers erode much more quicker when peers’ daughters swing unselfconsciously with lorry drivers and Negro musicians.

The innate rivalry of the dance floor has created a heightened awareness of such status ornaments as hair styles, smart clothes and make-up.

The time-consuming demands of the pop craze has so canalised their energies that relatively few of them display much interest in politics, social problems or even hobbies.

The intimacy of their surroundings and the encouragement of physical abandon has also inevitably resulted in a freeing and liberalising of sexual inhibitions.

But is all this any different from the twenties, when teenagers were swaying to the Charleston and the Black Bottom? It is all a question of degree and I think that at the moment we are going through a particular virulent phase of the rhythm epidemic.

And chief among the influences to be credited or blamed for this phenomenon is undoubtedly television.

There are at present no fewer than five weekly peak hour shows devoted exclusively to the playing and plugging of pop music. This compares with two programmes about politics, three about current affairs and two off-peak shows fortnightly devoted to all the arts.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of these pop programmes – presumably devoted to the ever-changing tastes and fads of their fans – is how quickly they congeal into frozen formulas and into mindless repetitiveness of the same technical gimmicks.

Oldest

The three oldest in the business – Ready, Steady, Go!, Thank Your Lucky Stars, and Juke Box Jury – have remained practically unchanged, down to the compere’s cement smiles, for almost three years.

Now with stentorian fanfares two of them ushered in what they shouted was to be a fresh era in pop presentation.

“We’re all terribly excited,” said Cathy McGowan, introducing Ready, Steady Goes Live. “It’s the very first show of its kind where everybody sings live.” If memory serves me right I thought that was what TV used to do before most of Miss McGowan’s audience were actually born.

There was no doubt that something fresh had to be done to Ready, Steady, Go! which had deteriorated disastrously from its early days, when its free-and-easy mingling of artists and audiences had given the show a spontaneity and bounce that appealed triumphantly to the very young.

But of late is anarchic shooting had become an excuse for sloppy directing, its natural studio environment had become a refuge for lazy set designers and cheap budgets, and its gay, lively enthusiasts had diminished into a jumble of spotty faced, frozen gawkers.

Harried into going live by a growing suspicion among audiences that mime merely disguised the incompetence of its performers, Ready, Steady, Go! moved into a larger studio and recruited some prettier girls into the audience.

But apart from discovering two girls who could sing remarkably like Dionne Warwick, it cannot be said that a new millennium in pop programmes was opened up by the renovation.

The problem of singing live proved that only Tom Jones and Miss Warwick could perform as effectively without the help of recording engineers. The actual sound balance of the programme was atrocious, with rhythm beats blotting out melodies and the background noises blurring the singing.

There was chaos in the cueing, with performers caught with their instruments down and egg all over their guitars. “You’ve done it again,” cried Manfred Mann at a bad cue. “Ready, Steady Goes Live. Aspirin sales have doubled!”

A.B.C.’s Thank Your Lucky Stars did much better with its revised show. Getting rid of all the nonsense stunts – audience markings “O’ll give it foive,” extraneous disc jockeys – the acts took place in a well-marked off arena, divorced form the audiences, allowing the lighting effects to play their full part.

Screams

By cutting to the fist-chewing, hysterical screamers in the audience only when it was needed to match the effect of the performers, the viewers at home could get an uncluttered, clean-cut picture of groups like the Beatles, the Animals and the Drifters without interruptions from the stamping fett and waggling behinds of the studio fodder.

I am at a loss, however, to explain the continued tolerance of the B.B.C. for Juke Box Jury. The juxtaposition of close-ups of astigmatic children and square-faced Moms with the sound of the latest records has long since ceased to be of any conceivable visual interest.

The sight of middle-aged people like David Tomlinson, Joan Turner and Catherine Boyle trying to communicate their with-it-ness to a glum-faced, mummified audience is one of the continuing embarrassments on TV.

What conceivable use their judgments are escapes me when last week no fewer than seven out of nine records were solemnly nominated as hits. David Tomlinson, indeed, voted for nine out of nine as hits which, as a standard, would make the turnover in the Top Ten as active as an explosion of jumping beans.

Smashing

This programme, like Ready Steady Go! also tends to correlate pop music with inarticulateness. The vocabulary of Sue Lloyd on Juke Box Jury seemed to be confined chiefly to the words “I love it, I think it’s great.” Cathy McGowan, doing most of the talking in Ready, Steady, Go! announced a “smashing” competition, thanked Manfred Mann for a “smashing” arrangement, said a harmonica player was “smashing” and told us that the four dancing couples we were going to see were – guess what? “smashing.”

And, in addition to doing something about this potential deleterious effect on teenager speech, could the producers of these programmes not be so shamelessly ready to plug any new American star that happens to float into town?

Dionne Warwick, in spite of her undoubted talent, does not deserve a spot on the Eamonn Andrews Show, Ready, Steady, Go!, Thank Your Lucky Stars and Juke Box Judy [sic] in just under ten days.

It would, indeed, be healthier all round if the entire pop world were farm more independent of the public relations men in the record business.

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HIT tunes. And The Beatles. They seem to go together like bacon and eggs. But we never seem to hear very much about HOW they write hit tunes.

Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney have been dubbed Britain’s answer to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Together, they have produced 52 successful numbers in four years. How do they do it? That’s what I asked when I interrupted their latest recording session at St. John’s Wood, London. And the answer: while tramping about Britain and the world in transit from one date to another.

“From Me To You” was born on a coach during a one-night stand tour; “This Boy” was originally scribbled down on an Airport Disposal Bag; “Can’t Buy Me Love” happened in Paris; in fact, the lads did most of the numbers from their first film “A Hard Day’s Night” while in Paris or touring America.

See The Beatles in:
Ready, Steady, Go! Friday
Lucky Stars Special, Saturday

Top left: Paul McCartney, bass guitarist. The Brainy Beatle. Speaks three languages.
Top right: George Harrison, lead guitarist. The Artistic Beatle. Teachers predicted he’d be a famous painter.
Bottom left: John Lennon, rhythm guitarist. Playing left-handed? “Well,” says John, “anything Paul can do…”
Bottom right: Ringo Starr, drummer. The Latest Beatle. Joined the group in 1962

No set routine. Sometimes John dreams up the tune and Paul writes the words; sometimes it’s the other way round. Paul wrote “Can’t Buy Me Love” on his own. John was the man behind their latest, “I Feel Fine.” But they always have a joint credit. Because they work together on the final “polishing up” technique, words and music.

They have a knack of knowing exactly what the other is thinking of musically. Call it pop rapport, if you like.

John whipped up “I Feel Fine” in an intense 90 minutes at the St. John’s Wood recording studios just over a month ago. It was waxed inside another hour — swift work by any standard.

Mention of Paris. Know how you say Rolling Stones in French? Thousands of beat-barmy Parisians know. When word spread that these five shaggy-maned laddies were appearing at the Paris Olympia, fans besieged the place.

All seats were sold within 24 hours’ notice that the Stones were to appear there. That’s the best business ever for the internationally-famous Olympia.

France digs the Rolling Stones. Spaniards love Susan Maughan. Slinky Sue spent three days in Spain a fortnight ago, fêted as the Best TV Artist in a nation-wide magazine poll.

When she returned to London, she notched up a motoring landmark, too. Her first parking ticket! Fined £2 [£40 today, allowing for inflation]. And they call her “Bobby’s Girl!”

Françoise Hardy, the 18-year-old French pop-ette who will be singing her latest “Pourquoi tu n’aime” on Saturday is motor-mad, too.

Crazy about cars. Drives a Mini-Cooper at high speed without batting an eyelash. Even in Paris’s traffic jungle. Until last month, when she was filmed driving around for an ITV company.

Françoise told me she was so busy trying to follow the instructions of the cameraman, she collided with SEVEN cars.

The Searchers are off to foreign parts soon. Or rather, a foreign part. Sweden. They’ve never been there before. Told me they were looking forward to smörbröd.

Smörbröd? Not a one-night stand town. It’s Scandinavian for bread and butter. And The Searchers just love freshly-baked foreign bread.

Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas are just back from America. Surprise for them in Hollywood. Had a visit from Chief Shooting Star, 73-year-old head of the Dakota nation and a descendant of Sitting Bull. He wanted to meet the lads who were using his tribe’s name to make heap big music.

Gave the lads beads and handsomely-finished Indian gear.

Also on American pop patrol: The Animals. Their 21-day jaunt had the girls in hysterics. Real, genuine hysterics.

In New York a lass had prolonged hysterics and was carted off to hospital in a strait-jacket! And in Utica, New York State, a theatre safety curtain had to be lowered five times in the same performance to save the Animals from rampaging fans.

While The Searchers are in Sweden, they will probably hear the name Lorne Lesley mentioned. She’s a big star there. But this dusky lass from Tiger Bay had language problems out there at first.

Take her first big show in Scandinavia. Didn’t know the Swedish for “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” So asked her pianist, who was also something of a wag. He told her… how to say:

“Good evening, ladies and drunken dogs.”

Lorne stepped up, was halfway through the greeting, then the audience was amazed when the pianist rushed across the stage and clapped his hand over the mike! Since then she carries an Anglo-Swedish dictionary.

No language problems for Long John Baldry. But he’s got sleeping problems. Especially in this colder weather.

Long John is a lofty 6ft. 7½in. [2.02m] tall. Longest bed he can find is only 6ft. 2in. [1.88m] So five chilly inches [13cm] of Baldry leg, plus the Baldry foot, stick out at the bottom. How does he manage to sleep at all? Easy. Wears football socks!

Finally, back to America. That’s where the Isley Brothers — Ronald, Rudolph and O’Kelly — live. Started early in show business. Brother Ronald was just three years old when he won a £25 War Bond in a song contest at Cincinnati Union Baptist Church!

Who are the Isley Brothers? Group who did the original recordings of “Twist and Shout” and “Shout,” both hot cover discs for The Beatles and Lulu respectively.

TAILPIECE: And don’t forget you can see pop stars Larry Parker and Jan Douglas in Tuesday’s Five O’Clock Club and The Trendsetters in Friday’s Five O’Clock Club.

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He didn’t quite, because The Beatles’ ’65 tour of America just about saved them from that, nevertheless on a points system awarded for each week’s position in the American charts, Herman did in fact come top of the poll.

In spite of his tremendous success Stateside, Herman hasn’t really made much impact in England since his first hit-record. Most of his records make the charts somewhere around the lower end but you can’t say the English really love him.

If the English fans don’t buy Herman’s records in the quantities the Americans do, they do have at least one favourite occupation as far as Herman is concerned, and that is to marry him off.

So far, I think Herman has been rumoured to be engaged to almost every girl on the British pop scene, from Twinkle to Jackie Trent, the latter being hardly likely since she is already happily married.

I asked Herman about this one day when I met him at the Alpha Studios in Birmingham where he was appearing on a “Lucky Stars” programme.

“Girls”, said Herman, “when do you get time for girls in this racket?” echoing the heartfelt complaint of practically every pop star one puts this question to. “Romance? No time.”

“As for marrying me off, the fans are nuts. I believe the rumour regarding Twinkle began because we were on the same bill a couple of times and I was spotted taking her out to dinner after the show. Then I was on ‘Juke Box Jury’ once, and I happened to be criticizing a record by Lulu and I happened to say ‘I love Lulu, of course, but…’ and next morning the papers had me practically buying Lulu an engagement ring.”

“Mind you, I do love Lulu, everybody does, she is a wonderful and sweet person, but that doesn’t mean wedding bells are ringing for me or for anyone else. In fact I’m much too young to get married, I’m having a wonderful time and I don’t think a man should get married much before he is twenty-five anyway.”

Actually Herman never had any intention of becoming a singer. It all started when he was given the part of a young boy who had to sing, so he started singing lessons. Peter liked going to a youth club and listening to an amateur group which played under the name of The Heartbeats. One day they were short of a lead singer and Herman, or Peter Noone as he was then was, asked to fill in. Later he joined The Heartbeats on a permanent basis and they billed themselves as Herman and The Heartbeats. Of that original group actually only Karl Green remains with The Hermits.

Their big-time careers started when they were heard by Mickie Most, the man responsible for the hits of The Animals and The Nashville Teens, who travelled up to Bolton to hear them, liked what he heard and put them under contract. The result was “I’m Into Something Good” which was a tremendous smash hit.

Following their enormous success in the American charts, it was inevitable that Hollywood would beckon, and beckon with an offer that even the “not wanting to be an actor any more” Herman would find hard to resist. The Hermits have made several small features but their first big-budget picture was made towards the end of 1965 and is due for release in Britain about the time this Annual is published. At the time of writing, very little has been released about the film and even the title seems to be not yet finally decided.

Anything can happen in a picture, of course, but there is little doubt that with Herman in it, the fans will flock to see it.

Reading through this article, one can hardly help noticing that throughout I have referred to Herman in the singular and have made very little mention of The Hermits. This is not so strange really, for I don’t think there is any other group walking the scene in which the other members have attracted less attention. Right from the start of “I’m Into Something Good” the spotlight has been turned entirely on Herman and I think it will always remain there.

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SHANE FENTON has made half-a-dozen appearances on “T.Y.L.S.” since that first date in October, 1961, when he appeared with his great group THE FENTONES.

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THE SPOTNIKS [sic] again reflect the space age, and in their strange Space-men costumes they stand in one of “T.Y.L.S.” ‘Out-of-this-world’ sets and play their big hit ‘Rocket Man’.

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THE TORNADOS hit the charts with ‘Telstar’, and not content to go to the top of British charts, rocketed straight across the Atlantic to the apex of the American lists. Here they are pictured during their first appearance on “T.Y.L.S.” in the Birmingham Studio in September, 1962.

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LITTLE RICHARD is another of the American stars who has come in front of ABC cameras, and was a new LITTLE RICHARD quite different from the tremendous boisterous artist of a few years ago. As always, his performance was of the highest standard.

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HELEN SHAPIRO made her very first television appearance on “T.Y.L.S.” shortly after the release of her first big record ‘Don’t Treat Me Like A Child’. Since then, viewers have watched this great girl star introduce hit after hit on the show.

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LONNIE DONEGAN’s cheerful disposition always makes for a happy day in the Studio for the camera crews and technicians, and his individual sound has made him a great favourite of the ‘at-home’ viewers.

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MATT MONRO has already established himself on both sides of the Atlantic as a great singing star. His appearances on “T.Y.L.S.” have served to confirm this stardom.

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JET HARRIS and TONY MEEHAN left the famous Shadows to go their own individual ways. After several months, they teamed up and made their first networked television appearance on “Thank Your Lucky Stars” playing their chart topping ‘Diamonds’.

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CHRIS MONTEZ and his partner, TOMMY ROE, are just two of the many American artists who are introduced to the British public in person by way of “Thank Your Lucky Stars”. CHRIS and TOMMY broke precedence on the show by taking over the entire second half to go through four numbers including TOMMY’s new chart climber ‘The Folk-Singer’. In giant sets facing each other across ABC’s Teddington largest studio, these two happy American stars really made an impression on the Studio and, at-home, audience.

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PETULA CLARK, whose records sell equally well in Britain and on the Continent, frequently flies in from her home in Paris to introduce her latest records on television’s top pop show “Thank Your Lucky Stars”. Her introduction of ‘Ya Ya Twist’ on the programme made it necessary for an English release of this number.

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JOHN LEYTON is one of the new breed of singers who are also actors. In fact, JOHN’s first appearances on television were as ‘Ginger’ in “Biggles” and as a pop singer when he played that type of role in a television play. His latest film, ‘The Great Escape’ with James Garner and Richard Attenborough, will open with a Royal Premier Performance in June. JOHN, however, is better known to “Lucky Stars” viewers as the singer of such top numbers as ‘Cupboard Love’.

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From the time, nearly four years ago, when a young man appeared in the charts singing ‘What Do You Want If You Don’t Want Money’, ABC Television’s programmes have always had a spot for that dapper young man ADAM FAITH. From “Boy Meets Girl” to “Thank Your Lucky Stars”, ADAM has become a great favourist of the Studio crews and his fellow artistes on the programmes. Below, ADAM has a big hug for Janice (‘Oi’ll Give It Foive’) Nicholls.

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FRANK IFIELD (above and left) is the only British singer to top the charts with three successive records – ‘I Remember You’, ‘Lovesick Blues’ and ‘The Wayward Wind’.

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Liverpool born BILLY FURY has become almost a regular star on “Thank Your Lucky Stars”, and has appeared more times than any individual performer. Rocketing to the top two years ago, BILLY is consistently one of the most popular stars of today.

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HI, this is your old mate Brian Matthew inviting you to take a look through the pages of this wonderful book of pictures taken from ABC’s “Thank Your Lucky Stars”, television’s top pop show.

In nearly 100 editions already shown, there must have been almost 1,000 personalities, including nearly every British star and quite a few American top recording artistes.

This book can’t attempt to show off all of these stars to you, but I think that the selection pictured really represents what “Thank Your Lucky Stars” means to me and, I hope, to you.

Happy viewing, and may all your stars be lucky ones.

Published for the proprietors by TV Publications Ltd, Bishop’s House, High Holborn, W.C.1. Printed in England by Berrow’s of Worcester Limited. © TV Publications 1963

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