In the first of a new series of blog posts, I recall my early days and the circumstances that gave me a passion for radio — beginning with the pirate stations of the 1960s …

On Monday the 14th of August 1967, at just after three o’clock in the afternoon, I sat alone in my bedroom in the east end of London and wept. The still air in the stuffy room was filled with white noise coming from a transistor radio and the hum of the motor in a Philips reel-to-reel tape machine which had been recording, via a microphone, the final hour of the pirate station Radio London.

Photo: MV Galaxy, home of Radio London. Credit: Martin Stephens

Disc jockey Paul Kaye had just played The Beatles’ A Day In The Life. As the final, famous, angry piano chord died away, Paul said: “Big L time is three o’clock and Radio London is now … closing down.” Then, for the last time, the station’s jaunty theme, Big Lil, had been played. Soon only the silence of the open transmitter remained. Then even that disappeared and all that was left was the random hiss of an unoccupied medium wave frequency.

That was what had set me crying my eyes out. My heroes, my friends — the DJs on my favourite pirate radio station — had been cruelly silenced by government decree. The Marine, Etc., Broadcasting Offences act was due to come into force at midnight that night and Radio London, along with many other offshore pirate stations, had been forced to close (the notable exception being Radio Caroline). It felt at that moment like they had all, literally, died.

I was no stranger to such feelings, even though I was only twelve years old. My father, who’d been ill all my life, had died three and a half years previously when I was eight, and the feelings of loss were still palpable. My Mum and elder brother Ted had tried to protect me from his death by not letting on for a few days but, prompted by their downcast demeanour and Dad’s absense from home while on another lengthy stay in hospital, I’d known instinctively what had happened. The constant stream of uncles and aunts, all of whom were inconsolably tearful, and my sister Jean and her husband Jim’s daily visits from nearby South Woodford, both of them wracked with grief, also gave the game away. Although I was really still too young to grasp the full implications of death, I’d understood at eight years old that it meant someone had gone away forever and that it caused great sadness amongst those left behind. This event, a few years later, now brought that previous tragedy with all its accompanying grief sharply back into focus. I cried for my departed friends — and, perhaps, for my departed Dad again, too.

I was too young to understand the finer points of government legislation; I cared nothing about the copyright infringements and unlicensed broadcasting of which, the government claimed, the pirates were guilty. I only knew that the bravery of these heroic DJs, who (as I saw it) risked their lives on the high seas to play me the latest pop records by The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Elvis Presley, The Hollies, Traffic and myriad others, meant nothing to the grumpy, nasty old men in parliament who were determined to have them shut down, or else arrested the next time they came ashore and thrown in prison. It seemed incomprehensible to me that the mere playing of pop music should attract such draconian punishment. The fact that politicians could make decisions that ignored what was obviously the majority of people’s wishes, produced in me a cynicism for the political process that has stayed with me ever since.

Youngsters today — in fact, anyone under the age of about forty — would find it difficult to imagine what life was like, entertainment-wise, for people living in the UK in the early 1960s, prior to the advent of the pirate stations. As I think back to those days now, my mind’s eye seems to present what little I can recall in a drab monochrome.

Photo: Rialto Cinema, Leytonstone (later The Granada), now long gone. Credit: london-e11.co.uk

Of course, television was also in black-and-white in those days, and when I look back through the few photographs I still have from those times they, too, are monochrome, so that may have something to do with it — but nonetheless, it was an incredibly austere existence for youngsters when compared with the way kids live today. Cinema was still a major source of entertainment, providing a few hours of happy escapism with their Technicolor dreams — I was a regular attendee of Saturday Morning cinema at the local theatre in Leytonstone, where each week we youngsters sang We’re One For All And All For One, The RIALTO Grenadiers! with great gusto — but personal home computers and games consoles were things way beyond our wildest imaginings. Mobile phones were non-existent (even landlines were a luxury); TVs were hefty great items with tiny screens — you had to walk across the room to change channels! — and the ‘wireless’ was for most people at that time a large box that needed plugging into the mains because they still used valves.

The development of transistor radios and the ability to mass-produce printed circuit boards containing miniaturised components, changed everything. I won’t go into the history of these items, that’s not the purpose of this memoir — but the confluence of technology and the extraordinary explosion of talent in popular music during the early-to-mid sixties brought about a cultural paradigm shift of monumental proportions.

Prior to the pirate wave which took off in 1964, Britain’s radio spectrum offered scant choice: it was, to all intents and purposes, totally BBC-dominated. The Light Programme played music — but much of it was fluffy, orchestral stuff, recordings of crooners from the 1950s and music-hall stars from the ’40s. The Home Service provided speech-oriented magazine programmes and some news. The Third Programme played classical music.

And that was it. None of it was of any interest to young people.

Radio Luxembourg, broadcast from mainland Europe, catered to a younger audience by playing pop music during the evening — but ‘The Great 208′ shimmered in and out of clarity as the signal, bouncing off the ionosphere, struggled to make its way to Britain. The pirates blasted out pop music throughout the day — and my world was never the same again.

I don’t remember when I first began listening to Radio London, but I remember the moment it closed as though it was yesterday. After controlling my sniffles, I played back some of the recording I’d made of their final hour — only to find that the drive-belt on my Dad’s Philips tape recorder was slipping (it hadn’t been used in a while), so the recording was ruined.

Photo: Philips reel-to-reel tape recorder similar to the one I inherited from my Dad.

It speeded up and slowed down as the tape was dragged past the playback head, producing a cacophony of psychedelic sound not unlike some of the wilder music John Peel used to play on his Radio London show. But of course that wasn’t what I wanted to hear right then! Disappointment hit me like a punch to the stomach. More tears — of sheer frustration this time — ensued.

Mum popped her head round the door.

“What on earth’s the matter? Why all the tears?”

“Ray-ray-radio London’s k-k-closed down,” I said through my sobs.

“Oh,” she said with a shrug, “is that all? Well, never mind. Now what d’you want for your tea?”

Ahh Mum, I remember thinking, you just don’t get it.

You just don’t get it at all.

I remember very clearly that that was the moment when I said to myself: That’s what I want to do: one day, I’m going to be a radio DJ.

To read part 2 of this series, see Radio Daze: Schoolboy Dreams

To read part 3 of this series, see Radio Daze: Interlude #1 — From This Perspective

To read part 4 of this series, see Radio Daze: Bedroom Broadcasting

Tags: Autobiography, Personal, Radio

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