Being Welsh, I grew up with lots of music. Everyone had a piano in their house and my father played in that kind of sliding, vamp style which made all the songs sound the same. And everybody could dance, so at 10 or 11 years old, you were taught to waltz and foxtrot. My parents could jitterbug which was like the precursor to jive, and as the Fifties evolved, when records like Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ arrived, everybody started jiving.
Then there was Tommy Steele and Elvis and of course in ‘58, when I was 12, Cliff Richard and the Shadows. We were inundated at that time with dance music and American pop like Neil Sedaka and Gene Pitney and it was really good.
When we were 12 or 13 years old, we would have record nights at people’s houses on Saturday nights. We all had paper rounds and on Saturday mornings, you would buy the latest single that was happening and take it to the record party that night. Your mum would bring you cake and tea or lemonade and you’d all sit in the bedroom - with the door open! - listening to records.
1962, when I was 16, was a very important year, because it was the beginning of the mod march. We’d left school, bought scooters and were very aware of the clothes that we wore, but it all came from the music. The music clearly defined who you were, what you looked like, who your friends were, what clubs you went to, the parties you were invited to. We eased away from Elvis and the rock and roll that came out of America, and started listening to bands like The Beatles who had their first hit in ‘63.
We had moved out of jive into the first ‘on your own’ dances, like The Twist and The Swim and all that kind of stuff. Suddenly, you were put in a position where there were no women involved. You had to be a good dancer - that was a given - but while you were dancing, you’d be looking for ‘your’ girl at the end of the night, the one that you had worked on all evening, because the last song was always a slow one. That was when you made your move and were either successful - or not!