In 1964, my father wanted me to go to university, but I didn’t because I was fascinated by the blossoming blues and rock scene. I couldn’t play an instrument, but I wanted to be a journalist. I was lucky because one of my father’s colleagues, Bob Baker, was the managing director of a company called Press Presentations at 7 Denmark Street - the original Tin Pan Alley - in London. It was a P.R. company which looked after the Yardbirds, Georgie Fame, Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band, Screaming Lord Sutch and one or two other less well-known people. I joined the company in early spring 1964 and it went very well for me.
When the guy who created Dixon Of Dock Green, Ted Willis, was ennobled by Harold Wilson, he got up in the House Of Lords and made a speech in which he was very scathing about modern music, referring to it as “candyfloss culture” which wouldn’t last more than five minutes. Lord Willis and my father were very friendly, and when I saw this in the paper, I thought it would be a good idea to get the Yardbirds down to his house in Kent on the Bank Holiday Sunday to play in his garden, with all the press in tow. And we did.
[Guitarist] Eric Clapton and the manager of the Yardbirds, Giorgio Gomelsky, got really chatty with Ted Willis and the band played some really good blues stuff, so I think he became quite a fan! The story made every single newspaper. The Daily Mirror and what was then the Daily Sketch - what we now call tabloids - gave it huge coverage and it even made the Daily Telegraph; the only minor thing about that was they had a photograph, but they called them ‘The Yardsticks’!
That was a bit of a coup for me and it decided me that at the age of 18, I would have my own business and being very young - and probably very arrogant and rather unpleasant! - I took the Yardbirds, Georgie Fame and Zoot Money with me and opened an office in Old Compton Street, above a strip club.