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 |  Sujet: Billy walked on... and there was nearly a riot ! Mar 04 Déc 2007, 13:53 | |
| Billy walked on... and there was nearly a riot Evening Courier, Halifax UK - 03 December 2007When Rock Around The Clock was shown
at the Gaumont Cinema, Halifax, it marked the beginning of a new musical era – the advent of rock 'n' roll. And Halifax, says Trevor Simpson in his new book, Small Town Saturday Night, was at the cutting edge of this musical revolution. In
the first of a series of extracts from
the book, he looks at the rock 'n' roll
greats who took to the stage here
MEETING Marty Wilde was a delightful experience for me and I was very impressed with the manner in which he greeted me and made me feel so welcome in his dressing room.
He's a big chap standing all of 6ft 3½in tall and according to the fan magazines of the 50s, weighed in at 13½ stones but his warm handshake and welcome totally distracts from what could be regarded as his physically aggressive size.
He was supported (at the Odeon Cinema on Wednesday, November 18, 1959 just 11 days before his wedding to Joyce from the Vernon Girls) by Joe Brown, Gerry Mills, Sally Kelly, Julian X, The Viscounts and a new star in the making, Gerry Dorsey, who later became Engelbert Humper-dinck.
Marty was a consummate showman and in addition to his own latest record Bad Boy, he tackled Bobby Darin's Mack The Knife and Ricky Nelson's Just A Little Too Much, which both sounded as though they were his own.
Of course it was Donna, Sea Of Love and the evocative Teenager In Love that got the biggest cheers but Marty was clever in his control of the audience because he asked them to clap in time with the rhythm and even sing along with the numbers instead of just screaming.
Adam Faith, unlike most of the home-grown "big-name" performers at the start of the 60s, only made one appearance in Halifax. It was a performance at the opening Odeon concert on the new decade on February 11, 1960.
The concert featured Adam as the headline act of the strongest line-up to be seen at The Odeon to date. It could be argued that he had joint top-billing with Emile Ford but the star always closed the show and that honour was left to Adam with Emile closing the first half.
Adam did come back to the area again, not to sing, but for a tour around the Gannex Mills of Kagan Textiles Ltd in Elland on May 22, 1963. He arrived in his gold-coloured drop-head Bentley and Joe Kagan (who became a Lord under Harold Wilson's Government) presented him with a Gannex coat made to his own specification.
On May 12, 1960 Gene Vincent appeared at the Halifax Odeon. In the four years from recording Be-Bop-A-Lula to arriving in Halifax, life had not been kind to Gene: his latest tragedy had taken place only a few weeks earlier when he was pulled from the wreckage of a crashed taxi that had taken the life of Eddie Cochran.
Gene Vincent did not disappoint as he took the stage, the screams of the female members of the audience were deafening. Dressed in black leather... as the spotlight hit Gene he looked like a startled black cat in the glare of headlight but as soon as he started singing he had the audience in his grip.
Deafening was the word to describe the noise as Billy Fury strode on to the stage (February 1961), grabbed the mic and sang.
They (the girls) threw things on to the stage toward Billy as their over-enthusiastic response to his sexuality and charm threatened to become a riot.
Then it happened out of the blue in the middle of him singing his latest release Wond-rous Place, he was hit square in the chest by a toilet roll.
The whole audience took a sharp intake of breath as Billy stopped singing and with a threatening look told "whoever threw that at me I'll see them in the back alley after the show to sort it out'."
* Published with the pernission of Trevor Simpson. Small Town Saturday Night is available at Fred Wade, priced £15 with all proceeds going towards Calderdale Hospital Radio.Source : http://www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/features/Billy-walked-on-and-there.3547583.jp |
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