When I became a professional musician in 1963, there was no real recording industry at the time, but all of a sudden, the recording industry started to buck up and this wave of English music cut across the world. It was absolutely amazing to eventually go to places in Japan and have kids come up with your album under their arm! You couldn’t speak to them and they couldn’t really speak to us, but the music was like an international language that bound all the youth together around the world. It was just an insane movement.

The Beatles really opened the doors to English music in America and even Jimi Hendrix had to come to London to get himself recognised for the fantastic artist he was. Then he went back to the States and actually suffered a pretty hard time. The Civil Rights Act had been passed in 1964, but it takes a long time to change people’s minds [about racism].

Jimi used to like to come and jam with us, and I remember he came down to a place called Blazers, just off Queensgate on the Cromwell Road. He was leaving during the break and his girlfriend came running to me and said, “Brian, Brian, there are these guys and they won’t let Jimi come up the stairs!” So I grabbed a couple of guys and went out there, and there were these three South Africans standing at the top of the stairs, taunting Jimi. We told them basically if they didn’t ‘go away’, we’d come up after them and finally they gave it up and left.

But that was extremely rare in London - extremely rare - because for all the white musicians and young guys, all our idols were black American musicians. Even the Beatles were listening to Chuck Berry and all sorts of other people. Sonny Boy Williamson used to come and sit in with me, and I made an album with him and Jimmy Page [‘Don't Send Me No Flowers'], so the colour bar didn’t really exist in this whole swathe of musicians