In the early 1960s I was still at school and getting my music from programmes on the BBC Light Programme following bands like Wayne Fontana And The Mindbenders, The Searchers and The Big Three. Even then it was clear from programmes like Easy Beat, Saturday Club and Here We Go With The NDO that the band most capable of reproducing their recorded sound live was The Hollies, as they performed numerous live radio sessions. In 1964 I was in the same school class as a cool guy called Alan Jones and he too was an enthusiastic Hollies fan, both he and I sporting the extravagant quiffs that bands, even The Beatles, had in those days. Alan had a certain cachet in that his sister was one of the numerous young ladies of Cheltenham impregnated by the energetic Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. Alan told me that the Hollies were booked to play Cheltenham Town Hall and I enthusiastically accept his invitation to accompany him. That day changed my life completely and turned me into a lifelong music fan with live performance being my preferred area. To my amazement, the Hollies were able to perform on stage in a way that reproduced their sound faithfully, while also having a whale of a time. Even I, so young and and inexperienced, was able to spot that Graham Nash’s guitar wasn’t even plugged in and therefore was completely inaudible, but the bulk of the sound was coming from the cherry red Gibson held high against the chest of Tony Hicks, who became my hero on that day and remains so today. The following year, we were lucky enough to experience the Hollies again in the same venue but then I was off to university and spending time abroad and my time with the band consisted of faithfully buying all their singles and albums and listening to them over and over again. Prior to that, there was an incident in school which I relate in my book Volume as follows:

‘We aspired towards Bobby’s lightness of touch on the cymbals and ability to do real snare-drum rolls and precisely-timed excursions round the tom-toms. And so we had to practise. We discovered that a particular desk in the Latin room was perfect for Bobby Elliott emulation. Different parts of the desk resounded in different ways and skilful use of all the fingers of both hands, plus the elbows (yes, the elbows) as bass drum and hi-hat pedals, could produce a passably accurate sound. This wasn’t easy, in fact it was quite a work of art. The song we liked to practise on was “Stay”, the Hollies’ third single. The drums on the speedy and perfectly-formed opus were tough to master, and I was triumphant when, after mid-morning break and while waiting for the arrival of Bog the Latin teacher, I got all the way through the song without a single error. However, when I finished the last finger-thwack, the expected tumultuous applause failed to materialise. Instead there was a deadly silence as I looked up to discover Bog standing over me, hands on hips. In his Cambridge gown, he looked like some kind of demented vampire bat. Fresh from his break time pipe, Bog’s fury was such that he twitched almost as if he were having a fit. In my terror, I still remember that, as his face convulsed, a light mist of pipe-smoke issued from his beard and drifted across the room. He grabbed my arm and whisked me to the Head’s office for six very painful strokes of the cane. I would have done anything to gain revenge for this cruel treatment of a harmless bit of fun. But that would have entailed telling my parents exactly why I had been beaten, and I couldn’t see their appreciation of Bobby Elliott’s drum technique as being likely to be very profound. Yes, Bobby, it’s all your fault.’ 

Here is another extract from the same book that relates how I tried to model myself on Tony Hicks:

‘He always did have the world’s best hairstyle and he still does. This is a very rare and precious gift. When I first became interested in the Hollies, Tony had a hairstyle which, for the time, was perfect in its appropriateness for what he was doing (playing inspiredly casual lead guitar and singing harmony backup vocals in a combo which had considerable credibility). His hair (as displayed on the cover of Stay With The Hollies, their first album) was coiffed into an exquisitely Brylcreem-sculpted Eddie Cochran quiff which somehow didn’t look like a teddy-boy. This contrasted with his colleague Graham Nash, who had a virtually identical style and an even more goofy grin. For me it was crucial to be a Tony Hicks and not a Graham Nash. Whatever the elusive magic was, I had to have it. Actually acquiring a “Tony Hicks” was quite out of the question but luckily, fate took a hand in the form of Beatlemania and the invention of the Beatle cut. You can trace on Beatles photos the arrival of the Mop Top style, and all contemporary bands not destined for obscurity followed with alacrity. My style guru Tony Hicks adopted what to this day I consider to be the quintessential hairstyle by changing to a mop top which genuinely looked like a mop, i.e. it tumbled floppily (Flop Top?) from the apex of his crown to lie in a symmetrical sugar bowl style which needed no cosmetics or attention to keep it in perfect shape. I could almost surmise that he didn’t even comb it, such was its casually impeccable state at the end of lengthy energetic live performances; on the other hand, I don’t believe that Tony Hicks has sweat glands, actually. But why am I using the past tense? Tony Hicks still has the same sublime head of hair (plus, no doubt, an ageing portrait in the attic). This desirable crowning glory can be viewed to best effect on the sleeve of the Hollies’ 1966 album For Certain Because, but have a closer look at their concert posters. There, under the spotlight, stage right, clutching the cherry-red guitar, you’ll see the mildly-flattened hamster that is the quintessential “Tony Hicks”.  I worked hard on my Tony Hicks and naively believed that I approximately attained it; photos from this Sixth Form era reveal, however, that I was far, far away.’

Like almost all beat groups of the time, the Hollies followed The Beatles and The Stones into a psychedelic era. Whereas their first couple of albums had consisted largely of very creditable and energetic cover versions, they started writing their own songs, dressing up in kaftans and beads and pretending that they were all taking psychedelic drugs, which, apart from Graham Nash, none of them actually were. Nevertheless, this era produced some wonderful albums and incredible songs such as Tony Hicks’ Pegasus the Flying Horse and the highly whimsical Graham Nash opus Fifi The Flea. You don’t need me to tell you that Nash and the rest of the band had developed completely different interests and that Nash left to relocate to the States, leaving behind not only his wife but also the rest of the band to strike out in a completely different musical direction. This seemed entirely logical behaviour and, while following his career with interest, I remained a dedicated Hollies fan, particularly happy that they had chosen the ideal replacement in the form of Terry Sylvester from The Escorts, who not only looked perfect but also had the high harmonies that needed replacing after Nash left. 

Our personal paths next crossed when I was able to interview the band in Norwich in 1969. The following extract from Volume shows that I managed to extract a scoop but, truth be told, this was my least favourite Hollies era as, free from the demands of fashion, they started doing the cabaret circuit dressed in identical white suits and made what was, in my opinion, the most awful pig’s ear of covering Bob Dylan songs. Here’s the extract:

‘Determined to get the interview with The Hollies, I chased them round all afternoon and evening. Before the gig? Too busy. After the gig? Too tired. What about at breakfast the next morning? Okay, when are you leaving? Eight o’clock? Bloody hell! Thank goodness, The Hollies had changed out of their white stage suits and looked more or less as they ought to. They immediately started asking the questions I’d hoped they wouldn’t: Had the students liked their act? Had the event been a financial success? It was obvious that they, too, were unsure of their career path and were still trying to recover from Graham Nash’s departure. And they were on the defensive about the Dylan album. Did the issue of the LP indicate a drying up of impetus after the departure of Nash? Yes, although there are several new songs ready now and they are adjusting to the new situation. Why had they recorded already familiar numbers? Simple (from Tony): It’s sad but true that people just don’t buy Hollies LPs, so they were going for the people who only buy records with familiar songs on them. I doubted whether this market actually existed, but this week’s album chart proves their point.” Some clever dick entitled the article Ollie’s Hollies. Before leaving, I did extract one scoop from Tony Hicks: “We’ve found a song for a single. If it comes off, it’ll be another “Whiter Shade of Pale”. Sure enough, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” appeared a few weeks later and made almost anyone forgive the band their sins.’

Over the following decades, The Hollies made scores of albums of widely varying quality, some of them quite outstandingly good but others what you might call inconsistent, with forays into disco and hard rock that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. Nonetheless I retained my faithfulness to them as a band and would continue to go and see them live, which was invariably highly impressive as the quality of the stage show (and the production standards) never wavered, even as Allan Clarke came and went. When Mikael Rickfors replaced him, they made a couple of albums that were only released in Germany so I was ideally positioned to enjoy them. I was also lucky enough to see them during the brief period with Carl Wayne of The Move as their lead singer before he tragically died. Prior to that I had recorded a long interview with The Hollies in 1980 backstage at Poole Arts Centre for BBC Radio Solent for whom I freelanced at the time. I still have the cassette of this recording, which sadly has degraded so badly that it is unlistenable, but I do remember feeling incredibly nervous as I quizzed Terry Sylvester and Bernie Calvert about their latest album. 

It was in 2001 that I suddenly gained more personal proximity to the band. Somehow, and I still don’t really know how it happened, my book Volume had found itself in the hands of Bobby Elliott and to my amazement I received a handwritten letter from him asking if I would be willing for extracts from the book to be used in their latest tour brochure, which he was responsible for compiling. You can imagine how thrilling that was for me as a strong fan, and of course I gave permission and felt immensely proud when I saw the glossy item on sale at the merch table. This new-found long distance friendship would then in subsequent tours allow Birgit and me to go backstage and talk to the band, with Bobby in particular being extra kind. My admiration for Tony Hicks both as a musician but mainly a rôle model for appearance and general coolness was never rewarded by contact with the man himself. I always say that on one location at the G Live venue in Guildford, Tony nodded at me but his hooded eyes appeared suspicious. 

Over the years I had done numerous Live reviews of Hollies concerts, several of which appeared in Record Collector magazine, and so it was that in their last tour on September 23, 2023 at  – yes – Cheltenham Town Hall, I arranged to meet and interview Bobby for a brief Q and A. It was the first night of the tour and quite clearly there were some fraught technical matters being dealt with. Amazingly, Birgit and I found ourselves on stage with the full lights in the middle of their sound check, and as Tony Hicks glanced over his shoulder to where I was crouching by Bobby’s drum kit, his expression was hardly a welcoming one. Still, we got the required photo and indeed I was lucky enough to see them again a week later at the Anvil in Basingstoke. That would be my last time of seeing the Hollies live because this week they have announced that Tony is unwell and is retiring from live performance after six decades of uninterrupted touring and of course his lifelong pal Bobby Elliott has accepted that decision and applied it to himself too. 

I think retiring gracefully at the right moment is probably quite typical for a band that has always trodden a path of sobriety and sensible behaviour while still being able to rock out to a very advanced age. I will miss them terribly but I’m very happy to have been able to share a tiny bit of my life with them. 

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Introduction

This article is about using camp sites in Europe for your camper van, specifically ones that offer ACSI discounts out of season. There are other options of course. Many van owners like “wild camping” but it is risky, uses up the leisure battery and in many countries is illegal, so we choose to avoid that. There are also dedicated camper van parks (known as “aires” in France and “Stellplätze” in Germany), which are slightly cheaper but very austere, normally just rows of vans on a concrete car park, so we only use them In an emergency.

Checking in

This is always slightly nerve-wracking because you never know exactly what awaits you.

Problems can start even before you arrive, because the directions can leave a lot to be desired and postcodes can be inaccurate. So it can take ages and numerous forced wrong turns before you even find the place. It’s quite likely that reception will not even be open, because they tend to have varying opening hours which you can’t predict in advance. Certainly in most European countries there is a lengthy lunch break from around 12 to 3. It’s possible that you might have to park up outside the determinedly shut barrier for a couple of hours before being granted admission. Then of course there is the question of whether they actually have any space, which is in the lap of the gods because you don’t know what special events may or may not be on. 0ften, different European countries will have a variety of bank holidays which you are unaware of but which mean that the campsite is fully booked. So you present yourself at reception and have no idea whether you’re going to be treated with grumpy resignation (mainly at the larger chain establishments) or greeted with wild enthusiasm and huge admiration of your sweet and rather unusual little campervan. Sometimes you will have to present your passport and fill out copious forms with numerous personal details; in other places they simply wave you through without taking any details at all. Normally you will be presented with an unintelligible map of the campsite and try to navigate the illogical numbering system before you eventually find your spot. You will be given details of all the rules and regulations and the location of things like bathrooms, waste disposal etc. At that stage you will be free to set up. For me, setting up has three main components: firstly, winding down the legs at the back of the van in order to stablilise it. This is an awkward activity, very squeaky because in 11 years I have still never remembered to oil it, which would make things a lot simpler. Then the gas needs to be switched on, again a slightly uncomfortable activity, and finally the rather intimidating procedure of plugging in the electricity. This entails untangling the cable, carrying it across swathes of sometimes wet grass and attempting to locate the plugin spot, which may or may not have a compatible plug. One thing you learn very early in campervanland is to take a variety of connections, otherwise you may be stuffed.

Facilities

Sites very enormously in what they offer in the way of amenities. Currently we are on one that has a swimming pool and a snack bar but last week we were on one that had neither of those and nothing to offer in bad weather. Normally there are facilities for washing clothes but how they actually work can vary enormously and often entail buying tokens to insert into the machines. Attempting to construct a washing line between two trees can be awkward and mainly is verboten anyway. Similarly, you never know what it is going to confront you in the way of showers, but one thing all showers have in common is they are far too small and offer no way that your clothes will not end up drenched as you shower. Sometimes these, too, will require a token and the four minutes allocated need to be calculated cleverly, unless you want to end up still covered with suds when the water runs out. The water of course can vary from blisteringly hot to icy cold. A squeegee on a pole is normally provided so you can make a token attempt at swishing the floor, which has no perceivable effect on the hygiene.

The toilets, well, where do I start? Will there be toilet paper provided? You don’t know in advance. If it is provided, will it have run out? You have no way of knowing until you are ensconsed. Will the loos even have toilet seats? Not in France they won’t. Will there be a chance of a “flush and run” special? Yes, in France, certainly. Your relationship with fellow human beings that you do not know is shockingly intimate in these communal facilities. I can’t speak for the ladies, but certainly the extraordinary and horrible noises that men make when doing their early morning functions are beyond belief and I recommend only using these facilities at a quiet moment like lunchtime when everybody has retreated into their caravans for a lie-down. Sometimes the toilet blocks incorporate all three elements, the wash basins, the toilets and the washing-up facilities in a single room. There are certain points of etiquette that need to be followed. I noticed this very morning guys coming out after a poo and washing their hands in the washing-up area. I got into terrible trouble last year on a site in Germany when I was discovered washing my socks in what turned out to be a washing-up area rather than a sockwashing area. It was a genuine error but someone spotted me and dobbed me in with the camp management, who came and remonstrated. It was a rare occasion for me to pretend that I was an Innocent Englishman who spoke no German and they forgave me.

On the subject of washing up, I have a question for those of my friends who are in long-term relationships. Do you ever consider doing anything at all without your partner? I only ask because at the time of year we travel, the people using the campsites are virtually 100% middle-aged heterosexual couples who seem to be so unwilling to be separated from their other half even for 10 minutes that they have to do the washing up together. They stand side by side, one washing and the other drying, but there’s never any suggestion of communication between the two, so you do wonder what benefit is being gained for either of them. I don’t think the quality of the washing and drying up is likely to be enhanced by having two people rather than one doing it, but I am invariably the only solo washer-dryer to be seen.

Miscellaneous

Campsite restaurants don’t tend to be very good. Sometimes they will advertise pizza but I have learnt nothing to contradict my normal approach that you should never buy a pizza from a restaurant whose speciality is not pizza. We tend to travel out of season so it’s not sensible to assume that the campsite restaurants or bars will actually be open or have anything beyond a minimal offering. Emptying your toilet in the morning is always a fun experience, as you join a queue of people carrying their piss-filled containers and with a beady eye checking that you are following the correct etiquette. This is of course after spending at least a quarter of an hour trying to locate the toilet disposal area in the first place, normally hidden in a far corner. The ability to fill your camper with water is also challenging and it makes sense to carry a wide range of connecting devices for attaching your hose pipe.

Dumping wastewater requires complicated forward and reverse movements with the van to position the waste tap exactly over a drain. Either that or try and discreetly open the tap on the pitch your occupy. This only works if it is a grass pitch and it’s fraught with danger if anyone should spot you doing it and tells the authorities.

Wi-Fi can be quite a conundrum, with great variations in provision. A few sites will offer free Wi-Fi but it rarely works in a satisfactory way because everybody is on it all the time, thus depleting its effectiveness. In that case, clusters of people lurk around reception, where the signal is strongest. Others ask you to pay a daily fee, sometimes with a minimum of two or three days. One place this year offered 30 minutes free and required payment after that and on one site the rather snooty lady said “You are on holiday and shouldn’t be using Wi-Fi so we don’t provide it.” She had a point, of course.

One perhaps unexpected thing that can crop up, especially in Germany, is the issue of how to pay. We were faced this year with several campsites that only accepted cash payments. Luckily these were ones we had contacted in advance so had been pre-warned, but it’s quite possible to arrive at the site and the first you know about payment conditions is a sign in the window. It’s equally possible that you will find yourself at a site that only accepts card payments and no cash, so it’s crucial to take a supply of each with you.

At this time of year I would say that 80% of our neighbours are Dutch. It appears that Dutch retirees are very well off and able to spend months travelling around Europe from site to site. They are invariably friendly and super respectable. It is very rare for us to encounter British campers anywhere other than in France. Some of the vehicles are beyond belief. Last week we found ourselves on a German site which doubled as a camper van sales outlet with hundreds of vehicles parked up for sale. Some of those were those gigantic ones which are literally the size of buses, with price tags that are unbelievable. I looked at one that was on sale for 385,000 euros, for which you could buy a very respectable house in Germany. We are always the smallest and most ancient van on each site. Most vehicles are gleamingly modern and you can easily calculate your fellow campers’ wealth. Either they had around £80,000 cash to buy it outright or they have around £400 a month to spare for HP payments.

One tip is to try and do a lot of research in advance about what might be near the campsite. Birgit is absolutely brilliant at this, thus we have this week been on sites featuring a Greek restaurant and a very good Indian restaurant where I had the best biryani of my life. It’s great, if possible, to be within walking distance of a village or town, but the most crucial thing is to be near a bus route or train station. This means that you can just leave the van on the site and explore without the fiddle-faddle of having to pack everything up and seek parking places in towns where more often than not the facilities are either underground or multi-storey, for which any camper van will be too high.

Most campsites will offer to order you bread and croissants for breakfast, but by no means all of them do, so it’s worth researching in advance. Inevitably, if you fail to buy anything for breakfast, the site you pitch up at will have no availability of food. Sites can vary from tiny meadows on farms to huge International chains with the focus heavily on families and children. These are likely to be heavier on noise but can often be just as entertaining as the rural affairs. It’s important to pay close attention to the microscopic print in the camping guide, for example the luxurious swimming pool depicted may actually be empty when you arrive. It’s also not unknown for the price to have changed dramatically since you decided to go there. There tends to be variable pricing, depending upon bank holidays etc.

Some travellers are very “purist” about never using campsites at all, and at the opposite end of the spectrum are the campers who plan their entire itinerary before they set out, booking all the sites in advance. That is a method that avoids some (though by no means all) of the issues I have described, but it would take a lot of the fun out of it for us. We value the flexibility to make day-by-day decisions about destinations. For example, this year we had situations where we liked a place so much that we decided to stay on a bit longer, and also examples of the opposite.

Apologies if some of this sounds rather negative. That is certainly not the intention, because in 11 years of annual early summer travels we have had the most wonderful times and the quirks and idiosyncrasies mentioned in this article are all part of the fun. Last week, for example, we spent a couple of days at what we both agreed was the most delightful site we have ever found, a family-run affair with charming hosts for whom nothing was too much trouble. Looking forward to year 12 already.

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We initially were headed for a spa town called Bad Kissingen but when we arrived at the campsite reception, we were greeted by a sign on the firmly-closed door saying that it was shut between 12 and 2. As there was still a lady inside at the reception desk, I hoped that she might take pity on us, but when she came to the door, she merely opened it, told me that we couldn’t check in until 2, locked up and disappeared, presumably home for lunch. This bit of German precision annoyed me so much that I declared we would not stay there. We proceeded to another site which was situated at a sports centre, but somehow we both agreed it didn’t look very nice, so we decided to take a risk and head for a so-called “Stellplatz”, something we had not done before. These are effectively car parks for camper vans. They do provide plug-in posts for electricity and a waste disposal slot but nothing else in the way of facilities such as showers, hence they are nice and cheap. This one was located adjacent to a swimming pool complex and was populated by people who seemed considerably more friendly and communicative than those we had come across on the regular campsites. We got into pleasant conversations with several families, including a young Danish couple who were spending their paternity / maternity leave driving around Europe with their tiny infant. 

Something we love to do in Germany is go for a Greek meal. Every German town will have at least one Greek restaurant and Coburg seemed to have three. The lady at the swimming pool told us how to get to the nearest one. This was when we made a slight mistake, by telling our neighbours (an elderly couple – the man was 82 and was still driving his huge campervan for five hours a day) about our plan to go to the Greek restaurant. We wandered through some pleasant suburbs to find the restaurant, which had a delightful garden in the shade of some willow trees. There was just one table available, so we sat down. Immediately the very eccentric, middle-aged, wild haired waiter came over and said that we should have approached him and asked to be seated. We apologised but he told us that the table was reserved. Birgit did her normal excellent job of being charming and I put on my naïve, ignorant foreigner act and he agreed to move us to an unlaid table on the outer fringe, on condition that we ate up quickly. We ordered and were waiting for our food to arrive when we noticed the old couple from the Stellplatz at the entrance. The waiter was shaking his head emphatically and clearly saying there was no availability. To my horror, I noticed that the lady was pointing towards our table and us, and in no time she had convinced the waiter that we were friends and were waiting for them to arrive. Thus it was that we had to share our planned romantic tête à tête with whatever the German equivalent of a Daily Mail reader is. Luckily, their food took ages to come and we were able to escape. 

The centre of Coburg was absolutely stunning, like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale, with frescoed buildings, a beautiful town square and atmospheric narrow, cobbled streets. We ended up in the sweetest little bar imaginable for a late-night schnapps. The following day we planned to visit the castle at the top of the hill overlooking the town, but before that we spent a couple of hours in the swimming pool complex, where there was a huge variety of pools of different temperatures, some indoor and some outdoor. To get to the castle there was a minor problem in that roadworks meant that the bus up the hill wasn’t running and we had been warned that the pedestrian route was extremely steep. A visit to the local travel centre brought the result that we were given a replacement taxi to take us up to the top. I had visited that castle as an impressionable teenager on a school trip in the 1960s and was thrilled to discover that absolutely nothing had changed, as we wandered round the battlements to the accompaniment of the buzzing of a gigantic swarm of bees. I became engrossed in a reverie about ageing and all that life had brought me in the years since the last visit. We strolled back down to the hill and sought out an atmospheric Gasthaus, where our beers were brought to the table by a robot. I even enjoyed some shopping (something which is normally an anathema to me) because there were so many fun independent shops actually selling interesting things. Most days on our six-week trip were pretty much like this but the visit to Coburg was a representative example of the wonderful times we had. 

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Much of my life revolves around gigs, either attending them or arranging them. I’m also involved in small and medium-sized venues and festivals, so I’m tempted to set out my feelings about the live music scene at the moment. I know that the impressive work of the Music Venues Trust has brought this topic to the forefront of people’s minds in the last few years. 

I’ve been prompted to share some thoughts by something that happened this morning. A gig that I was looking forward to going to by an American band in a local venue was suddenly cancelled. In my disappointment, I contacted the promoter to try and find out the reason. I knew that several of my friends would also be likely to be disappointed, having looked forward to the show. It’s not an entirely new band but it’s a band that has rarely toured in the UK before. The promoter told me that after months of promotion and the tickets being on sale, they had sold a grand total of zero tickets. This was a situation that couldn’t be ignored because, as we know, every gig comes with its attendant costs of venue hire, staffing, payment for the band etc, etc. At some stage defeat has to be admitted and the plug pulled in the interests of everyone involved. 

The night before, I’d been to a show locally where the performers were outstandingly entertaining and everyone present enjoyed every moment. The problem was that there weren’t many people present, I’d say maybe around 30, and as an experienced promoter I could tell that the evening must have made a resounding loss both for the artist and for the venue. And on a personal level I have a couple of shows coming up that aren’t selling, even though they are established artists who have played sold-out shows for us in the past.

We are all used to the phenomenon of small festivals cancelling shortly before the event on account of low ticket sales, the two most prominent examples this summer having been Red Rooster and Kernofornia. The blame is often laid at people spending all their money on stadium shows or huge festivals like Latitude or the Hyde Park sessions, but just this week some of the biggest open air events for years, featuring artists like Eric Clapton, have also been cancelled for lack of interest. In a strange contrast, there seem to be more smaller and medium-sized festivals than ever before, most of which seem to flourish. Similarly, where I live in the Southampton area, this summer has seen a series of big open-air shows by mainstream artists such as Paul Weller and OMD and the whole thing has been an enormous success, with wall-to-wall sell outs. “Pub Rock” is more lively than it has been in years, with pubs turning to live music as a way of getting customers in, even though almost all of the bands are cover bands. Not really my thing but any band is better than none at all. 

People are casting around trying to interpret all this but it’s hard to find any hard and fast explanations or indeed solutions, because there is no clear pattern. One thing I know is that there are individual “scenes” for certain types of music, for example the metal scene remains popular, there’s a surprisingly vibrant and widespread blues scene, and again in my area we have venues such as the Joiners in Southampton which brings joy to my heart by advertising nightly shows by bands I have never heard of with Sold Out stickers on them. This tells me that there is still a thriving interest in and following for young indie bands, as there always has been.

In my own little field of “Americana” there is a faithful audience for touring bands from America and Canada, although the scene is actually a lot smaller and more insular than it might appear, It’s noticeable that many tours are playing much smaller venues and an increasing number of house concerts. Some venues like The Bear in Luton and the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Birmingham are tiny and you can see artists there who a few years ago would have played in places several times their capacity. Although this indicates a scene on the wane, there is the phenomenon of country artists who can swiftly accumulate followings big enough to fill the likes of Wembley. Who actually reaches that level seems to be largely random. 

Now I am going to risk being lambasted for saying something that has so far been unsayable. One reason for empty venues and cancelled tours is that there are just too many artists and not a big enough audience. As a promoter, I get approached several times a day by agents punting singer-songwriter types. I dutifully listen to the songs and in the main they are very good, but it’s simply impossible to book all of them. The audience, despite its enthusiasm, simply can’t go out every night of the week or indeed afford to do so, so they have to become selective. I regret to say that if I put on every show I got offered, almost all of them would be empty. This is, I emphasise, no reflection at all on the quality of music or the performance, it’s just that there is no longer room for all of them. I’m really sorry!

Demographics are important here too. Our audience tends to be people in their 50s and 60s. Not wanting to be morbid, but they won’t last forever and is there any sign of a new generation? No, there isn’t. I recently read an article about only a tiny proportion of chart hits nowadays being by actual bands. Luckily these things do go in cycles and my mentioning of the Joiners gives me heart, knowing that there are young music lovers happy to go out and support their favourites. There will always be bands around but people’s entertainment habits vary. Remember when we thought live music had died for ever when the dance and clubbing scene came along? Nowadays there are addictive phones and gaming consoles too.

So-called Legacy bands are going through a fruitful era at the moment, but even they have to be careful not to put themselves into halls that are too big. There’s a trend for two or three acts from the 80s to tour together in order to flesh out the audience. In my own little scene, I know exactly which bands will sell out and I’m always right, but it doesn’t stop me booking bands that I know won’t sell out, just because I love the music – very selfish, I know. Most acts have a maximum audience ceiling and the old days when they could be booked into bigger and bigger halls with confidence are largely gone, although of course there are exceptions. I’ve really loved watching new young trio The Molotovs go from nothing to huge venues in the space of a year. 

At a small venue level there are a couple of phenomena to mention. First are the begging internet posts imploring people on bended knee to buy their tickets well in advance because otherwise the show could be cancelled owing to a perceived lack of interest. This is a really awkward one, because I fully understand and appreciate anybody not wanting to book tickets months in advance knowing that there was a chance that the gig might not take place. Nowadays it’s possible to keep an eye online on how tickets are selling and how many are left, so there’s little risk involved in leaving it until near the actual time. This also removes the risk of unexpected things cropping up which make it impossible for you to attend. Press adverts are few and far between nowadays because they are expensive and, as we know, there’s not much money around, so most promoters and artists rely heavily on internet posts. You can always tell when a show isn’t selling as the posts get more and more frequent. Connected to this is another matter which I find just heartbreaking. This is when artists go online themselves and implore people to buy tickets, effectively admitting that they’re not particularly popular and putting the blame on people for not wanting to come and see them. This kind of emotional blackmail can be really embarrassing. As a writer, I can fully identify with the situation but do I plug my books online to make people aware of them? I certainly do, but do I beg people to buy them? No I don’t, because they are capable of making their own minds up about whether they are interested in either my writing or the topics I’m writing about, just as any of us make decisions day by day about what we’re going to do, buy etc, and of course what shows we’re going to see.

Probably the most upsetting words you’ll hear as a promoter are “Oh, I wish I’d known about it, I’d have loved to come”. People’s capacity for failing to notice advertising is extraordinary. Reaching neutral people is really difficult if they’re not Facebook friends or on your mailing list. How are you going to reach them? Word of mouth is still by far the best method. Here in Winchester I have a dear friend who regularly rounds up his extended friendship group and drags them along to most of our gigs, for which we are eternally grateful. Interestingly, though, if he is not keen on a particular artist and therefore doesn’t put the word out, none of his friends attend without him. 

Where does that leave our beloved small venues, yes, those ones without which the music industry could not exist because that is where new talent is nurtured? I remember the impotent rage I felt when writing my book about the Joiners Arms, where the vast inverted pyramid of the live music business was revealed. The most important foundation, the small venues, struggled while the big concert promoters hoovered up the money and gave nothing back. It’s true that MVT has started to make some small progress in attempting to rectify the situation, but for most small venues little has changed. One of the oddities is that they remain to a huge extent reliant on alcohol sales to bring in a certain amount of money to subsidise the loss-making shows. Through a combination of high beverage prices and changing habits, it’s nowadays rare for people to go out and do a substantial amount of drinking while listening to music. In fact I’ve always thought it was a rather odd connection. Why is it necessary to drink alcohol while listening to a band? But that’s how the scene is structured and so it remains. 

The small venues are as adaptable as they are able to be, and virtually none of them have entirely avoided the tribute band / comedy circuit route. Good luck to them. Our friends at the Brook in Southampton have for years successfully used the profits from tribute evenings to subsidise more “credible” shows.  True patrons of the arts! While the dedicated music venues struggle, there has been a notable uptick in the amount of shows being held in unlikely places such as people’s back gardens and local churches. I put on shows like this myself but in a way I feel guilty because we’re able to do it because we don’t have the overheads that a conventional venue has. Run entirely by volunteers and not for profit, we don’t have to battle with rent, rates, staffing, VAT and all the other travails of a traditional music venue. Could we unwittingly be adding another nail in the coffin? I genuinely don’t know, but it does enable us to give quite a lot of extra work to impoverished musicians who can’t find it elsewhere.

I can’t come to any conclusions about all this. I’ve just set out a few random thoughts that came into my head because I’m sad enough to spend a lot of time thinking about these things. Sometimes I think that maybe people just don’t want to go out and listen to bands anymore and that’s all there is to it. Lots of things in my lifetime have changed irrevocably because society has changed so much. Could this could be just another one to add to the list? I do hope not.  

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Railway memories

When I arrived in Winchester in 1976, there were few places that presented live music. At the bottom of town was the Cricketers, now a Japanese restaurant, and what is now the rather smart Bishop on the Bridge was then a down-at-heel pub called the Riverside. Not far away was the Art School Union, a real den of iniquity and a genuinely dangerous place to hang out, although they did put on some great music including the Soft Boys (which I promoted), the Blue Aeroplanes and even Throbbing Gristle. My wife and I got to work quite quickly putting on punk gigs upstairs at the Riverside, which was quite challenging because it also functioned as a hotel at the time and the clients’ bathroom doubled as the band dressing room. We had to cope with an awful lot of pogoing, scuffling and gobbing and although we had some good gigs, we didn’t pursue it.

At the other end of town we knew that The Railway was the home of folk music, which took place in the upstairs room, as well as some blues. Round about 1980 I was quite heavily involved in the Southampton music scene, which boasted some very high quality bands who played original music and attained Peel sessions etc. It seemed wrong to me that they weren’t getting the opportunity to play in Winchester, so one day I popped in to the Railway to inquire about hiring the skittle alley at the back. This is now the Railway’s main music room, but back then it had pillars all over the place and no stage. Nonetheless, we decided to put on some new wave shows featuring the best of the local bands. These included the Skavengers, Games To Avoid, The Press and a fantastic band from Gosport called The Time. I can’t remember whether we actually paid to hire the place or whether the landlord let us have it in return for us bringing in punters to buy his beer. I can’t even remember the landlord’s name but he didn’t show any interest in music. Still, it was clear that the sticky, sweaty little back room was blessed with perfect acoustics and just the right ambience for rock and roll, even though the bands were playing in front of the darts board on a carpet. We had to hire in a PA of course, and clear away the skittle alley paraphernalia before allowing the engineers to build the creaky old sound system.

I don’t think the audiences were very substantial but I was teaching at the time in the city and persuaded quite a number of my pupils and their friends to come along, although they were almost certainly under age. We felt that the shows went pretty well, but before long our family expanded and we temporarily stopped putting on shows. During this period a guy called Duncan, who ran a record shop in Stockbridge Road, started promoting regular gigs at the Railway and I think the seeds of the venue as we know it today were probably sown during that period. I can remember quite a few experiences there, including a dreadful brawl during a performance by a band called the Whisky Priests and, less frighteningly, experienced our first band from over the Atlantic who were called Spirit Of The West. I think that probably put the idea in my mind to start bringing American and Canadian bands to the Railway when we started SXSC, possibly because the Railway has the vibe of a classic US dive bar.

It wasn’t until 1987 that I personally became involved again in the activities of the Railway. I wanted to promote some friends from Dorset who were a band called Automatic Dlamini, so we put them on at the Railway on December 14 and it went so well that we got them back again on 24 March 1988. By that time they had been joined by Polly Harvey, leading to the myth that P.J Harvey has played at the Railway. Polly herself indeed was in that band, but the actual PJ Harvey Band under her name has sadly never played at the Railway.

Over following years my visits to the Railway became more frequent, checking out local artists such as Chris T-T and Black Blue Fish Very Beautiful. This was the beginning of what became known as the “Fred years”, when the Railway was run by the affable but mildly chaotic Fred Eynon and his wife Lynn, who also ran a smelly and yowly cattery from what is now the pub garden. The Railway as we know it now came into being during that period, with the removal of the pillars, the installation of a stage and a house PA and lights and a very productive concentration on multi-band bills of local college musicians, very much in the tradition of what we now know as grassroots music, nurturing future stars. My own involvement as a promoter during this phase came about because our daughter Annabel was in what might loosely be called a “girl band” called The Sense. As they and their indie backing band Vacant were all attending Peter Symonds College, their Railway shows were invariably packed and intense affairs that gave me the bug. Seeing Peter Bruntnell perform at the Tower Arts Centre gave me and Richard Williams the incentive to start promoting Americana gigs at the Railway because it was such an ideal venue. The rest is history really, because I’m still doing it now.

Fred was succeeded by another manager called Ben Ward who had engineered at the venue before moving to the Tower and then eventually returning to take over the reins at the Railway, where he spent a number of years before becoming director of Winchester Science Centre, a post that he holds to this day. The Railway seemed to be doomed to closure at that stage but was rescued by Dan Lloyd and his partner Lucy Knight, who are still running it today.

What I’d like to do now is have a self-indulgent reminiscing session about some of the tales that have accumulated during my numerous visits to my favourite small venue.

June 13, 2002, Stag
This was one of the earliest bands of future star Andy Burrows, who only lived a couple of hundred metres up the road. In true showbiz tradition, it was a showcase to present the band to some influential London business people, so somehow I blagged The Sense on as support. Sadly, the industry bods turned up after they’d finished and also failed to sign Stag. But this was a story that would be continued.

October 16, 2002, The Soft Boys
Becoming increasingly bold in promotion terms, I risked a lot of money by booking the Soft Boys for a reunion show. The place was packed to a dangerous extent and of course Robyn Hitchcock disappeared into town and got lost, meaning that by the time he eventually located the venue, the crowd had become extremely restless and we had to do some quite brave policing to keep things calm.

October 30, 2002, Nizlopi
This was exciting because it was probably the first time what you might call a famous band turned up at the Railway. They had some kind of local connection and eventually had a huge hit with a song about a JCB before disappearing again.

June 24, 2003, Sarah Sharp
This was the gig that gave us the confidence to start booking more and more American artists. Sarah Sharp came from Austin, Texas and the support was The Sense with Rachael Dadd and Kate Stables. Both the latter maintained strong relationships with the venue and went on to much bigger things.

21 April, 2004, Wreckless Eric
Probably the most shameful thing I’ve done in my life. I went to see Wreckless Eric at the Railway on the day of my mother’s funeral. I justified it by saying to myself “It’s what she would have wanted”, but she most definitely wouldn’t have wanted it. The worst thing about it was a load of drunks who talked all the way through Eric’s set. Eric was not impressed and the atmosphere was less than convivial.

September 16, 2004, Richmond Fontaine
By some strange serendipity we were able to book the legendary Richmond Fontaine from Portland, Oregon and it was covered enthusiastically by Uncut magazine. All of a sudden, the Winchester Americana shows had taken off and we were in the position to book more prominent acts such as Laura Veirs, The Deadstring Brothers and eventually, years later, big names such as the Felice Brothers, the Delines and Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express.

December 8, 2005, Razorlight
In my diary I wrote “Imagine how exciting this was. Now quadruple it. You’re still not there”. The Railway at its absolute best with a rammed crowd exploding with goodwill.

December 19, 2006, Mark Eitzel
The mercurial Eitzel had specified that he didn’t do encores, so at the end of his set we put on the house lights and the background music. He marched off the stage, out through the front door of the Railway and disappeared into town, not to be seen until hours later. The following day I got a message from his management complaining that he was furious because he hadn’t been allowed to do an encore.

April 2, 2008, Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express
This took the prize for the fullest I’ve ever seen the Railway. The capacity in the back room is officially 100 but I inadvertently sold 150 tickets. Literally every audience member was glued to their neighbour as sweat poured down the walls and the evening was marked by a complete maniac in the front row who had to be ejected by security. Other similarly overfilled shows included some ska events. I remember particularly Neville Staple, The Beat and The Selecter, where the entire venue appeared to be bouncing up and down. On the topic of security, the Railer has had the happy knack of always having friendly and highly professional security people, as well as very confident and friendly bar staff, often impressively youthful. I won’t name any specific names because they have all been excellent and know who they are. The same goes for the succession of faithful and talented sound engineers who have consistently maintained the high quality sound that the semi-underground venue is famed for. And by the way, nowadays the capacity limits are strictly adhered to.

May 1, 2008, Jesse Sykes
This was a notable evening for a couple of reasons. First Jesse and her musical partner Phil Wandscher had a massive barney during sound check which led to a superbly tense and exciting performance. Possibly more notable was the fact that the support act J Tillman, now better known as Father John Misty, was completely off his face on some kind of substances and on the way back to Twyford, where he was spending the night, was shouting and swearing and abusing everyone around him before crashing around the house knocking over ornaments and being a general ass. I’m sure he’s a delightful person but I was pissed off at the time.

August 1, 2008, Ian McLagan and the Bump Band
One of the biggest stars ever to grace the stage of the Railway was Ian McLagan of the Small Faces, backed by a crack band of Texan musos. People spotting the diminutive musician in the area were gobsmacked to see such a superstar, who played with the Stones and Dylan among many others, attempting, with his road crew, to manoeuvre his enormous Hammond organ through the side door of the Railway. Eventually the door had to come off his hinges in order to get it through.

November 3, 2010, Chesney Hawkes
Chesney visits occasionally and invariably the venue is suddenly populated by swooning middle-aged ladies. Chesney became a Railway fan and like Mark Morriss of the Bluetones, returns regularly. Others in this category include James Walsh of Starsailor and Ben Ottewell of Gomez. The audiences of non-regulars that come to these shows are always impressed to find that the Railway is not the rough corner pub that it may appear to be from the outside. The main venue can be fully seated with comfortable chairs and air conditioning. One wonders what stars like Chesney make of the fact that they have no backstage loos? As a male punter, you often find yourself peeing next to a star, discussing whether anyone has ever actually bought a vibrator from the Stix machine.

July 26, 2011, Ed Sheeran
Sheeran was number three in the charts at the time and it was a serendipitous booking because it was shortly before his career went stratospheric. He rather sweetly upended a beer crate and played acoustically in the middle of the room, but the excitable young audience was annoyingly chatty and the momentous occasion wasn’t actually as brilliant as it could have been. That year also saw Ghostpoet, who had just been nominated for the Mercury Prize.

October 18, 2012, The Deep Dark Woods
This was a show that I had arranged on the understanding that it was a quiet acoustic band, so they had been booked to play in the upstairs room. For years and years there had been problems with the neighbours complaining about noise, so there are strict rules about drums and amplifiers in that room. Imagine my horror when the band turned up in a van with full amplification gear including a vast Hammond organ and large drum kit. They set it all up, leaving little room for an audience and very professionally played at extremely low volume, causing no issues with the neighbours.

February 18, 2012, Malcolm Holcombe
One of the most memorable Railway shows ever, for a bizarre reason. Malcolm Holcombe was a very endearing but extremely eccentric American musician who had a frightening habit of rocking to and fro on his chair, looking as if he was going to tumble offstage at any moment. He also had an unusual sartorial style, dressing pretty much as a hobo. On this occasion, a lady noticed that he was for some reason looking into the dustbins in the car park and came into the pub to report a down-and-out misbehaving. She then proceeded into the room and was astonished to find that Malcolm was the featured artist. This story gave me the germ of an idea that was eventually to develop into my crime novel Zander, which was set almost entirely in the Railway, although I gave it a different name in order to be discreet.

July 11, 2013, Andy Fraser
The bassist from Free performed with an all-star band including Jack Bruce’s son Malcolm and Chris Spedding. Andy had become quite eccentric in his latter years and most of the audience were disappointed that he only featured a couple of Free numbers, leaving the bulk of the show in the hands of his young protégé Tobi. Other such veterans included Terry Reid, who performed twice, and, most memorably, Ginger Baker, who insisted on smoking throughout his set despite the strict ban. After consuming his cheese and pickle sandwiches upstairs, Ginger came on stage, not realising that his band was still in a nearby restaurant having dinner. It did feel incredible to think that such a legend was playing our humble local venue.

Some of my favourite memories have been double shows from US artists who prefer to come to the Railway and do two shows in one day rather than play a bigger venue elsewhere. Those who have done that have been Richmond Fontaine, The Delines, Laura Veirs, Chuck Prophet and the Felice Brothers. Canadian act The Barr Brothers had so much equipment that the stage was barely visible beneath the acres of effects pedals and a huge full-size concert harp that had to be manoeuvred through the side door.

If this article has been a bit Americana-heavy, it’s because I’ve promoted most of the shows mentioned myself. Therefore it’s always a relief when attending other people’s shows. I missed the legendary Dua Lipa performance but loved joining in the general mobbing of Anais Mitchell and Imelda May during their shows at the Railway. Plus, of course, like anyone else, I can just pop in for a pint and a pizza, because, apart from all its other lovable characteristics, it’s a proper boozer.

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