As the Sixties progressed, the National Jazz and Blues Festival started featuring more and more rock bands. I’d seen Cream doing their very first rehearsal in a church hall and then I went to see them at Klooks Kleek at the Station Hotel in West Hampstead, and they were fantastic. The big premiere for the public was the 1966 Jazz and Blues Festival, which was held at Windsor that year.
Everyone was waiting for Cream’s headlining appearance, but just at that moment, the heavens opened and it poured with rain and everyone ran for it. The poor old band were left playing on stage in a middle of a deluge!
But in those days, there was so little security you could go anywhere on the site and park where you liked. I had my little black Ford Consul car which I’d parked in the field, so I just drove it towards the stage with the windscreen wipers going and watched the band from the cover of my car!
The other important aspect for music in the Sixties was the weekly TV show, ‘Ready Steady Go!’. That was even bigger than the clubs in a way. The TV studios where it was filmed were in a rather dismal building, like an industrial warehouse, in Wembley. They had a little canteen and rather like the Ship in Wardour Street, as a music journalist, you’d find all the visiting bands there. I remember interviewing the Lovin’ Spoonful there.
The Americans couldn’t understand the English way of life, because it was pretty primitive in those days. There were no McDonalds or Starbucks, so the poor old Americans like James Brown or the Byrds would all be sitting there, eating these horrible English cheese sandwiches served with cups of tea, and they weren’t happy bunnies!
Most Americans visiting London then looked terribly miserable. I used to think, ‘What’s the matter with these people?’ I remember interviewing the Beach Boys who all had long faces. Of course, England was so cold to them; we didn’t have any central heating - or food that they recognised. It wasn’t until I went to America that I realised what we were missing!