Browsing Tag The Sorrows

As Crossfire nights go, this one was up there with the best, a stellar line up of top DJs and two live sets. My main job was to check out the bands and man, am I so glad that I did!

First up was the Strypes. I had heard a lot about these lads. They’ve been causing rumblings in the music biz, which is a rare thing these days. Hailing from Cavan, Ireland, they have been quite a success story in their homeland as well as causing a stir wherever they’ve played. With an average age of 15 (that’s right, 15 !) and a new EP just released, I was keen to find out what all the fuss was about for myself. So, there they were, looking like a hybrid of every sixties pop band you can think of. Their influences were not so much worn on the sleeve, as worn on every inch of them from head to toe.

As for the music, I’ve not heard such a blistering set from such a young band for a couple of years. If you ever wondered what it was like to see the Stones, Yardbirds, The Who, Them or any of the sixties beat bands before they hit the big time, then the Strypes will give you a damn good idea. This is what ‘blue-eyed’ R&B should sound like. Opening with ‘Little Queenie’, the lads barely stopped for breath tearing through their set, which I might add, was very well thought out. The lead track from their EP ‘You Can’t Judge a Book By the Cover’ plus ‘Got Love If You Want It’ with a drop of ‘I’m The Face’ neatly tucked in the middle got deserved rapturous responses from the crowd. At one point the drummer was the only one who didn’t swap instruments or take lead vocals, such is the confidence of the band. If you didn’t get to see them this time, make sure you do. You really won’t be disappointed.

Next up were freakbeat legends the Sorrows. Way-back-when, the Sorrows were known for their particular brand of beat, which in truth, was way ahead of it’s time and was a good contrast to the Strypes. Sorrows fans would not have been disappointed as the band included all the favs from their illustrious career. ‘Baby’, ‘She’s Got the Action’, ‘You’ve Got What I Want’ and ‘Take a Heart’. Don Fardon was in fine form and by the end of the set, it’s fair to say, the Sorrows were worth the price of admission on their own. Instead, here were two bands at very different stages of their careers and both on top, top form.

Peter Markham from Ugly Things talks to Don Fardon, lead singer of the Sorrows. PART 2

GOODBYE WEBB STACEY, WILL PITY, DON MAUGHN – HELLO DON FARDON!

UT: After you left the Sorrows in ’66, you decided to give up the music business altogether, even swapping your Jaguar for a Morris Minor?

DF: When I left the Sorrows in ‘66, I had no job to go to, a new baby boy who was two-years-old and not very much money. My wife had a ladies’ hairdressers shop, which just about paid the bills, but left nothing over. So the first thing that went was the Jaguar. I met a guy who played rugby football with my brother-in-law, who had a cheap car for sale. It was a battered Morris Minor, which he agreed I could have and pay him for it when I got the money. I didn’t realize that he used to take the whole football team out in it on Saturday nights. We used it for about six months, when one day my wife called to tell me the front wheel had dropped off in the middle of the main street in Coventry and was blocking traffic! The front axle had snapped off.

We were now in real trouble, no money, we couldn’t pay to repair the car, bills were piling up and the pantry was almost bare. I was too proud to ask my father for help, which he would have given to us. My father had a huge house and gardens the size of a football field. So to supplement our food bill, when it was dark I used to go up there and grab a few cabbages and carrots to go with the two sausages we had for Sunday dinner. I don’t think times were ever as bad as they were then. But, by god, does it teach you to appreciate things. Something we have never forgotten. We had to sell my wife’s jewelry, and I remember making a promise to her then that one day I would make it all back and more.

UT: You were eventually convinced to return to singing and signed on with top London manager Eve Taylor, who also had Adam Faith and Sandie Shaw in her fold.

DF: I managed to get a job back in engineering with a company my father had once been a director of, and it was whilst I was there that one day the works security police came to tell me a car was waiting outside the factory gates. As I left work I went over to the car and the driver informed me that he had come from a London recording company and that I was to go with him back to London to arrange the contract. I told him to push off as I wasn’t interested, as I had just sorted my life out and had found a steady job at last. People had been to tell me the car from London had returned. I went to the driver and said, “Look, mate, what part of NO don’t you understand?” He said, “Why don’t you just talk to them? What have you got to lose? You can still walk away if you don’t like what you hear. It won’t cost you anything to listen, will it?”

So I went to London with him to see what it was all about. The record company said, “What will it take for you to sign a contract with us?” I said I wanted the equivalent of my annual engineering salary for at least two years in advance, paid into my wife’s bank account. They said, “OK, you got it!” I was back as a solo artist.

UT: Then you were signed by CBS as a solo artist, and were about to release your debut single, “It’s Been Nice Loving You” (written by Burt Bacharach and arranged by Percy Faith), on which production costs ran up to £6,000. But you ran into some problems with your old record company?

DF: My recording manager was Miki Dallon, who arranged for me to meet big time manager Eve Taylor, who said that I would be the next big thing to hit the scene. She went to a Christmas party at ATV Studios and whilst she was there she told everyone about this new singing sensation she was about to sign. Louis Benjamin, the head of Pye Records, heard her and whether through jealousy or what I don’t know, but he went back to Pye and said to his legal department, “What do we know about Don Fardon?” They checked their records and said, “He was signed to us with the Sorrows.” So the swine slapped an injunction on me which was in place for eight months before we could get it dropped. By that time Eve Taylor had moved on. I couldn’t record or work during this time, so it was back to square one—although the record company still paid me my wages, thank god.

INDIAN RESERVATON AND THE SOUL MACHINE

UT: Around this time you also fronted a band called Don Fardon & the Soul Machine, which was a popular stage act that toured all over Europe backing Ben E King, Arthur Conley and Aretha Franklin. Tell me a little more about that particular band.

DF: Back home I was getting restless, I knew some guys from Birmingham and approached them about forming a band so that I could earn some money. It became Don Fardon’s Soul Machine. After a couple of weeks gigging around, an agent saw us and offered me a tour of Germany. We set off for Berlin. All was well until we arrived at the East German checkpoint, when the drummer found out he had lost his passport! The keyboard player said he had his brother’s passport that he picked up by mistake, so we could use that. They looked nothing alike! Can you imagine how I felt as I handed over the eight passports? I hoped that by giving them in a bundle the East German border guard might not notice! I was crapping myself. And would you believe it, we got through. But when we arrived on the other side they made me fly him back to the West. During that tour I played on stage with the greatest names that the soul music world had every produced, including Otis Redding, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave and Wilson Pickett. (Black soul singer Chester Riggon replaced Don as the frontman of the Soul Machine, rechristened the Atlantic Soul Machine, who are amazingly still together – Ed.).

UT: Then you ran into Miki Dallon who signed you to his new label, Young Blood, and set your sights on Germany and France instead of the UK. The single “The Letter” sold over a million copies in Germany alone. How come you turned to the continent?

DF: We started releasing records in Germany first because I had established a name there. The first three records I released there were all chart entries, I was flying!

UT: In ‘68 “Indian Reservation” entered the charts in the US. How did that song come into your repertoire?

DF: My producer went to America, and returned with a fistful of demos for me to listen to. One of which was a song written by a housewriter at Acuff-Rose Music Publishers in Nashville, Tennessee called “Indian Reservation” which they thought might be a chart song, so I recorded it—along with, over the next six years, over 200 other tracks. “Indian Reservation” became a massive worldwide hit for me.

UT: You continued to tour the club circuit doing cover versions mixed with your own songs?

DF: I had found a Scottish cabaret band called A Touch of Raspberry and joined the cabaret circuit for three years.

UT: Your success in Germany allowed you to have your own radio show, and you also worked as a journalist for Axel Springer?

DF: My status in Germany was growing, and at this time it was probably one of my biggest markets. I received offers from all kinds of people. I started writing a pop column for a national German newspaper, and also used to record a weekly show which was pumped over the border into Eastern Germany. It was heady days.

I realised quite early on that if I wanted to make it big in Germany, I had to try and master the language. My German record company at first provided me with a driver/chaperone who was an attractive English speaking female. So when I arrived for my second tour, I asked if I could have someone who did not speak English. That was when they provided me with a male driver/bodyguard. When you spend a month, 14 hours a day, traveling all over Germany with someone who doesn’t speak your language, then you are forced to speak theirs. And it worked! That he turned out to be an ex-SS officer is another story. But my lasting memory of him was that if drinking booze became an Olympic event, then I had been in the company of the gold medalist! They say that when he moved house there were so many empty bottles in the back garden it put 10,000 DM on the value of the house! And when we flew to France and back, he drank so much on the plane I had to pay duty on him to get him back into the country!

UT: You also had a venture into the film business and did a film called ‘The Long and Short’?

DF: The German record company put my name forward to appear in a film, which was to be the German entry for the annual Golden Rose of Montreux [Rose D’Or] Awards. I as it turned out was to star alongside the French legend Charles Aznavour, who was one of the nicest guys I ever met. He was a walking history book on everything French. And of course a close friend of Edith Piaf, whom I adore.

UT: Two years later, “Indian Reservation” was reissued in the UK and became a hit.

DF: In ‘68 “Indian Reservation” became a hit all around the world, except in the UK. I don’t to this day understand why not. Miki Dallon told me it only sold three copies, and I bought two of those! When I was working on the Northern cabaret scene in the UK in 1969 I became very friendly with Radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis. I used to stay at his family home in Manchester if I was working in the area. His mum was like a second mum to me; it was like home from home. Except for the giant fruit bat that shared my room with a three-foot wing span—and it wasn’t in a cage!

I arrived back from a gig one night late, and Dave was waiting up for me. He’d been to the pictures to see a film called Soldier Blue all about the demise of the Red Indians. He said, “I reckon if you re-release your ‘Indian Reservation’ now, it will be a hit.” I said, “No chance, buddy, the record company will never go for it.” So unbeknownst to me, he called them the next day, and as they say the rest is history.

UT: As promotion for the record, you went to the States to do some publicity. Could you tell me a little about your time Stateside?

DF: There was a Swedish guy called Jan Olafsson who worked at Young Blood. He had something to do with ABBA in the early days. He called me up and said that the Americans would very much like to have me over to do some publicity calls, so I agreed. We drove down to Dallas where we picked up some movie producer, and headed off to Oklahoma to the Cherokee reservation at Talaquah. It was the 150th anniversary of the Trail of Tears festival. To remember the uprooting of the Cherokee Nation from Colorado and the forced march in the middle of winter to their re-settlement in Oklahoma. There were over 3,000 Indians present when we arrived; it’s one of the most moving things I have ever witnessed. Also it was a bit terrifying, to be the only white people there. And they allowed us to film it. I presented a copy gold disc to the current chief of the tribe, a Wilma Mankiller, and we still keep in touch from time to time.

UT: In 1970 you toured Scandinavia and recorded an album in Sweden with English producer Roger Wallis. The Master of Ceremonies was Kim Fowley. How did that all come about?

DF: In September of 1970 I set off for my first ever Scandinavian adventure and I loved it. We recorded a 50/50 live/studio album backed by my Swedish session band, who were a great bunch of guys. I remember as we were on our way to Norway, it began to snow, I mean big time! At four in morning we were the only car on the road. I say a car, but we were in a converted ambulance, which had aircraft seats, very comfortable. We hadn’t seen another vehicle for an hour when in the middle of nowhere we came upon a traffic jam. It was -20 outside, so we sat for what seemed ages. Then I and the lead guitarist went to see what was wrong. Two guys in a VW Beetle had come round a corner and hit an elk, which had come through the windscreen, killing the driver and pushing the passenger into the backseat, and he was trapped under it!

The following day they took me to the top of the ski-jump. Who the hell decided it would be a good idea to strap two bits of plastic to your feet, go to the top of the tallest tower you can find and leap off? I am still in awe of the experience. Before I left Sweden, Roger Wallace, the record producer introduced me to Kim Fowley, and they said, “Why don’t you let Kim introduce the LP?” So we recorded a piece at a nightclub to put on the front of the record. What a loon!

UT: Did you have much to do with the other artists on Young Blood, like Jimmy Powell?

DF: At Young Blood it was just like one big family. We were all good mates with each other. Mack and Katie Kissoon used to do a lot of the backing vocals on my records. Z Jenkins, who was a session guitarist and played on the Carpenters’ records and played on “Baker Street” for Gerry Rafferty, came on the road with me for three years and acted as my musical director. Jimmy Powell and I worked together for a showbiz agency in Wolverhampton for a couple of years as booking agents, and we actually managed a local band called [Ambrose] Slade. One Monday morning, Jimmy, who at the time was skint, quietly sold them to Chas Chandler for £200! The pillock!

UT: In 1970 you released “Belfast Boy” about George Best. Tell me a bit about how that song came about.

DF: In 1969 or early in 1970 I got a telephone call from some guy who said he was an independent film producer and had been commissioned by the BBC to make a television documentary about the life of the world’s greatest footballer, George Best. He’d heard me singing in a show in the West End of London and said he would like me to sing the title song for the program. I told him that I didn’t do session work, and that I was under contract to a record company, so it wouldn’t be allowed. He said, “If they say you can do it, would you?” So I said, “Yes I would.” He phoned Young Blood and we got the OK, and into Abbey Road Studios I went to sing “Belfast Boy.”

At the end of the session he was over the moon with the result. He said “Don, that’s fantastic. Let’s go and have a drink to celebrate.” I said, “It’s 4:30 in the afternoon, all the pubs are shut.” “It’s OK,” he in- formed me, “we can go to my club.” So we’re sitting in this club, in a booth having a beer, when he notices some people in the other booth and waves to them. He got up and went over to them. I couldn’t see them from where I was sitting, but when he came back he said, “They want us to join them,” so over we went. It was really quite dark in the bar, so to my surprise, as I sat down in the booth, I looked over to be introduced to his friends, and sat looking at Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor!

The TV show came out the following Wednesday night at nine o’clock and from 10 o’clock for the next five hours the phone lines to the BBC were jammed. When would the record be available, what label was it on, etc. So my record company had a meeting with the BBC and licensed it and released it in 10 days. George and I spent many days together promoting it around the country and it became a hit. We remained friends till his death, and I did the epitaph on TV to him on the day of the funeral. When I am asked what he was like, I always say that he was the most ordinary guy you could every wish to meet. His most favorite things in life were a cup of tea and hot buttered toast. I’m sure he will be remembered for his football and not the other things that flawed his genius.

UT: In 1971 you left Young Blood and stopped working with Miki Dallon.

DF: In 1971 I had started to feel a bit stagnant. I was just cruising along the showbiz highway aimlessly. I met a guy who was a big noise with a brewery company, and during a meal we had a conversation about pubs and restaurants. He said, “If you ever fancy a crack at the license trade, give me a call.”

I had a young baby son whom I never saw, and a wife whose company I really enjoyed. I asked her one night if she fancied becoming a publican, and to my amazement she said yes. I informed the record company I was coming off the road and we purchased our first pub eight weeks later, the first of five we were to own over the next 20 years. There’s another book on this subject alone!

UT: You continued to release records on various labels up until 1976 when you retired from the music business. How did that come about?

DF: Although I continued to record, the restaurant life was so intensive, working 16 or 17 hours a day, I found that it took all our time and effort, so it was with a sad heart that in ‘76 I decided to retire from music altogether.

In ‘96 I joined the BBC to present a weekly show on music from the ‘60s and ’70s and then they asked me to do a daily show, so I was on seven days a week, and I loved it. It’s one of the best times of my life, and I got the bug back. I formed a country band to back me and wrote a musical called Line Dance Fever, got 12 female dancers and the best line dance teacher in the USA, Angelique Fernandez, to come over and off on tour we went for two years.

UT: Last year there was some renewed interest in your version of “I’m Alive.”

DF: I was on holiday in Spain last year, when one day my wife called me from the garden to say there was a phone call from a firm of lawyers in London who wanted to speak to me. They represented a mineral water company who would be interested in using one of my songs for an advertising campaign, and would I be agreeable? They wouldn’t tell me at first who the company was, but after much probing I found out it was Coca-Cola. I was delirious! The campaign was to be used on national TV and the ad company responsible called me to ask if I would audition to do the voiceover as well, which I did, and I got the voiceover too!

UT: Tell me a bit about your present day musical activities as well as the reunion of the Sorrows?

DF: Things and the moment are really great. I met a guy in Medem in France, a couple of years ago. and he called me out of the blue and asked me if I would like to do a country album. We did it in Nashville and it was released on December 6. As we speak, they have informed me it’s selling well in the US and Ireland, so I’m hoping for more tours later this year. I have also been contacted by a company who would like me to appear in some music festivals in France this summer, so it’s still “GO GO GO!” I am also trying to get a couple of the remaining Sorrows together to do a small nostalgia tour, but that’s still ongoing. •

SORROWS LIVE DATES 2012

Sat 2 June – Midlands Mod Weekender, Birmingham
Friday 29 June Festival Beat - Salsomaggiore Terme (Parma) Italy
Sunday 5 August Euro Ye Ye – Gijon, Spain

DON FARDON & DC FONTANA LIVE DATES 2012

Thursday 2 August – Euro Ye Ye, Gijon, Spain

 

THANKS: to Beau & Miki Dallon, Gered Mankowitz, Pete Chambers, Rolf Rieben, Mary Payne and Rayanne Byatt.

Peter Markham from Ugly Things talks to Don Fardon, lead singer of the Sorrows.

Who was the greatest male British blue-eyed soul singer of the ‘60s? That question has been asked many times. Some people’s preferences are, with very good reasons: Steve Marriott, Reg King, Chris Farlowe, Van Morrison, Georgie Fame, Steve Winwood, Steve Ellis, Zoot Money, Duffy Power, Eric Burdon, Long John Baldry, Dave Berry, Jimmy Powell… and the list goes on. My favorite, though, without a doubt, is Mr Don Fardon, a native of Coventry—sometimes known as the “Detroit of England” (home of the Rolls Royce and almost every other British automobile). Fardon basically helped define the term “freakbeat” with his former band, the Sorrows, of “Take a Heart” fame.

Donald Adrian Fardon was born on August 19, 1943 and stands an impressive six-feet seven inches tall (that’s taller than both Long John Baldry and Mick Fleetwood!), and he possesses a big powerful voice of a wide range to match his spectacular frame. Fardon did stints with various local Coventry beat groups, before forming the Sorrows in 1963. After a handful of singles and one very underrated album, ‘Take a Heart’, he went solo in ‘66. Fardon didn’t achieve any real success in his home country, and was, in fact, unable to release any records for a short time due to contractual issues, so he instead set his sights on Germany and France, where he went on to become a hugely successful pop star in the late ‘60s, with a string of stunning singles recorded for the Young Blood label in the UK and issued by the Vogue and Hit-Ton labels on the continent.

While most New Untouchables readers are doubtless already familiar with the Sorrows, Don’s 1967-69 solo output is hugely underrated. His material was mostly rearrangements of other people’s songs, but transforming them into his own distinctive versions with the help of ace record producer, arranger and songwriter Miki Dallon, who also penned ‘Take a Heart.’ These brilliant sides of hip ‘60s club sound with big bold brass, swinging string arrangements, rocking guitar and groovy Hammond, backing Fardon’s rich baritone have been filling up floors at modernist events for quite some time. File them under “Mod R&B groover / blue-eyed soul dancer / garage fuzz dance floor filler”—terms that are used to much annoyance on eBay listings nowadays (I recently saw a Jimi Hendrix 45 listed as “Northern Soul!”). I personally can’t imagine ever DJ’ing without spinning at least one or two Don Fardon 45s!

John D Loudermilk’s “(The Lament of the Cherokee) Indian Reservation” was a massive hit for Fardon, with its pulsating beat, atmospheric horns and fuzzy guitar. (The Raiders cut their own version later and scored their only #1 US hit). Fardon’s version was initially released in ‘68, but topped the European charts in ‘70 and went on to sell an estimated three million copies worldwide (other sources claim one million, but that’s still quite a lot).

The early ‘70s saw Fardon with another unexpected hit single, “Belfast Boy,” a tribute to perhaps the greatest footballer of all time (that’s soccer to you yanks), the legendary womaniser, boozer and top striker for Manchester United and Northern Ireland, George Best. The quality of Fardon’s records fizzled out a bit up until the mid ‘70s, when he retired from the music business. He returned to performing in the ‘90s with some country & western “Line Dance Party” themed discs recorded in Nashville (which this writer has not heard for obvious reasons), as well as various compilations of his ‘60s output.

Last year saw a surprise resurrection of Fardon’s career when his version of Tommy James’ killer “I’m Alive” was used in a TV commercial for the Five Fruit Blend soft drink 5 Alive, complete with dancing dodo’s and a music video featuring a cameo appearance from Don as a gardener in an old age pen- sioners’ home full of senior citizens rocking out! Also upcoming at the time of writing is the reunion of the Sorrows, and a Coventry all-star rock’n’roll outfit called Don Fardon’s Rock-it.

After a few months of searching for Fardon on the information superhighway, I was able to track him down in his hometown of Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire (roughly midway between Coventry and Birmingham in the West Midlands, close to Rugby, the birthplace of the gentleman’s sport of the same name), which he has called his home for the past 30 years. An engineer by trade, he has also been a radio presenter for BBC Coventry and worked security with former British wrestler Tony “Banger” Walsh. Now in his late sixties, Fardon has been managing a series of local country pubs with his wife Susan and son Richard, in between the odd club gig and recording sessions, as well as being a grandfather. It doesn’t look like he has any plans for retirement any time soon!

THE HAWKS, THE VIKINGS, JOHNNY & THE REBELS, AND THE MILLIONAIRES

Ugly Things: You were born during World War II. What was it like growing up in post-war Britain in the industrial West Midlands?

Don Fardon: Yes, I was born during the Second World War, in one of Britain’s most bombed cities, Coventry. I always wondered as a child why Coventry was chosen as target. I now know, having lived near here for the past 60 years, that Hitler decided to show that the Germans DO have a sense of humor! My father had an engineering business, which the Luftwaffe duly flattened, and as his company was on essential war work, the government moved us 50 miles away to a shadow factory to enable his work to continue. I have here in the house a wine cabinet that the directors of Rolls Royce presented to him in 1945 which states “For the continuous supply of tooling from 1939-1945 with our immense gratitude for your aid to the war effort.” He made the tooling for the total production of the Rolls Royce Merlin engine that was used in the Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster bombers. The war years were dire. Hardly any food, fruit or meat. I never saw a sweet until I was six or seven years old. The first banana I saw my brother ate with the skin on! All this went on till I was at least 10 or 11. So you can understand why we all went barmy in the ‘60s when things returned to normal and the shops for the first time in our lives were full of goodies!

UT: What was your earliest interest in music, did you begin in skiffle groups like many other musicians from that era?

DF: My first interest in music began at an early age. I went to a boarding school as my father was always away on business and in 1948 I had a shock that still reverberates through me to this day… my mother died. I used to spend hours on my own listening to the radio—no TV then, not for another five years. On Sunday evenings when I started work I used to go to the Hippodrome to the big band concerts in Coventry. All the world’s best dance bands came and I loved it.

UT: You were born close to where William Shakespeare was born and for a time you considered a career as a Shakespearean actor?

DF: Although I lived right next door to Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare, I, like most children of my age, was completely turned off by the Bard. The stories were OK but the dialogue was undecipherable to most teenagers. We were more interested in the Goons.

UT: Tell me about your first band, the Hawks, where you went under the name of Will Pity.

DF: Whilst I was working as an engineering apprentice, I used to supplement my wages by working at the Locarno Ballroom. It was there that I saw my first electric band, the Hawks, and I was blown away. As I was leaving the ball- room at 1:30 in the morning, I saw the band outside. It was pelting down with rain, and all their gear was outside on the pavement. I asked what they were doing and they told me they were waiting for the van to come to pick them up, as the driver had taken his girl home. I said, “You should sack him!” And they said, “We can’t, it’s his van.” I said, “You should get a manager then.” The following Sunday my father told me, “Some people are asking for you at the front door.” It was the band, and they offered me the manager’s job! Which I took. Hello, show business!

Four weeks later we were at a cinema in Rugby and the singer hadn’t arrived. The cinema manager said, “I have 350 in there waiting for a show, if you aren’t on stage in three minutes I shall cancel the performance and sue you.” I really panicked as my name was on the contract, so I said “Right, on stage now, boys. I’ll sing!” and the rest, as they say, is history. When the singer did turn up I sacked him and became the permanent vocalist.

UT: Your next band was the Vikings, where you appeared under the name Webb Stacey.

DF: The first band that I actually formed was the Vikings. I had seen a fantastic lead guitarist in Coventry called Jim Smith, and he knew how to get a gig at the 2i’s Coffee Bar in London, where all the big names got started. So we formed a band so that we could play there, which we did, with Cliff [Richard] and Marty Wilde. But nothing came from it, so it was back to Coventry. I was with the Vikings for 18 months when I was approached by the management of the top Coventry band at that time called Johnny & the Rebels. They were having trouble with their lead singer and asked me to replace him. So I did. After a couple of years I became disillusioned with the Rebels. We were all on wages, and I could get more money alone, so I gave notice and left.

UT: You then formed your own band, Rockin’ Lord Docker & the Millionaires. What’s the story behind that dashing band name?

DF: I formed a band called Rockin’ Lord Docker & the Millionaires and walked on stage with a St Bernard dog, top hat, gold cane and a cloak. It was a “wow”—that is until a solicitor’s letter from Sir Bernard Docker—the chairman of the Daimler Motor Company arrived, informing me that unless the name was dropped I would be sued for defamation. So we became the Millionaires. (Don was replaced by not one, but two singers in the Millionaires, Beverley Jones and Ricky Dawson, known as “The Duke & Duchess” – Ed).

A SORROWFUL BUNCH

UT: In 1963 you formed the Sorrows with ex-members of several other Coventry beat groups. How did you get together?

DF: At about this time all the bands around the West Midlands used a late night café called Val’s. It used to stay open till four in the morning, so it was a great place to eat after a gig. It was here that I met Pip Whitcher, and after another meeting we decided to put a band together that would be different. He knew a bass player and I knew a drummer, and the bass player knew another guitarist. So we had a band.

UT: How did you settle on the name the Sorrows?

DF: We practiced in Pip’s mum’s front room, and as she came in to listen to us she remarked, “Well! You do look a sorrowful bunch.” We had a name.

UT: You had to come up with a stage name in the Sorrows?

DF: It was decided that as lead vocalist I should have a stage name, as was the custom back then, as in Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, etc.. So as we were called the Sorrows we looked for something sad, or lonely or miserable. The word that we found collectively was ‘mournful’, so I became Don Maughn, for about six weeks, until we played the Fairfield Hall in Croydon with Susan Maughn, who at the time had a huge hit in the charts with “Bobby’s Girl.” So I said, “Knickers to this! I’m using my own name from now on,” and so it was.

UT: The Sorrows were the most successful group to come out of Coventry. What was the local beat scene like back then? There was other groups like the Mighty Avengers, the Ivy League and the Orchids.

DF: The local beat scene back then was great. Because of our location, we were next door to Birmingham, which is only 18 miles up the road, so we, as a top band, were able to fill our date sheets, which kept us working round the clock. We worked with all the top bands of the time. The only group we never appeared on stage with during a six-year period was the Beatles. But we met them off stage on a couple of occasions. We became really great pals with the Who. Their drummer, Keith Moon, followed us everywhere. He really thought we were the bee’s knees. God, he was a mad sod! I nearly ended up in jail in Brussels because of his crazy antics. I had been doing a pop show for Belgian TV with the Who and Mud and several other British groups, and after it finished Moonie asked me to join them for a meal at a real top restaurant. It was the swankiest place I had ever seen. At the end of the meal we were chatting and Moonie said, “Did anyone see Tommy Cooper on TV last week?” He’d done a trick where he took hold of a tablecloth on a table full of crockery and whipped it away, leaving all the stuff on the table intact. “I can do that trick!” So he walks to a table away from where we sat where four business- men were dining, and said “Excuse me.” He then grabbed their table cloth and pulled all the contents onto the floor, leaving everyone in the place open-mouthed. He simply said, “Oh, sod it, it worked last time!” The whole table of ours promptly got up and legged it out of the place, except me who sat stunned and waited for the police to arrive. I was taken to the local nick, and whilst I was making a statement Moonie arrived and paid up for the damage, and I was released without charge.

UT: Tell me about some of the local Coventry venues like the Locarno Ballroom, Mercers Arms and the Orchid Ballroom.

DF: The local scene around Coventry was buzzing in the ‘60s/’70s: the Flying Club, where all the local groups played; the Matrix, where we saw the Beatles and Jerry Lee Lewis played regularly; the Orchid, where I booked an act that I’d seen in London called Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds and we supported him, and packed the place, and I made money like I’d never seen before. (The other booker at the Orchid Ballroom was a certain Larry Page, a for- mer singer who went on to discover the Troggs and run his own successful record label, Page One – Ed). Leamington Spa, our neighbor, had a magnificent park called Jephson Gardens where we played with five other local bands one Sunday afternoon, again packed with several hundred people. Our manager decided to book the biggest theatre in the Midlands, and organised a Battle of the Bands. Twelve of the best of the Midlands local bands played that night. A top A&R man from Pye Records in London was invited and first prize was a recording contract with Pye International. Guess who won? We did!

UT: One of the biggest acts on Pye was the Kinks. Did being on the same label as them affect your choice of material—to have a harder edge, so to speak?

DF: No, we already had developed our style by the time Pye signed us, and our A&R man John Schroeder looked out for material to suit us, and no one else.

UT: Despite being a successful local act, the first two Sorrows singles didn’t do too well in the charts. This must have been quite frustrating at the time?

DF: Not frustrating that the first two records were not hits. We were by this time playing all over Europe seven days a week, so we did not have time to think. In hindsight we maybe should have done more in the UK to promote them, as we did with our first hit.

UT: Pye/Piccadilly then paired you with producer Miki Dallon, who would mean a lot to your career in the rest of the ‘60s. How did you meet him?

DF: We never met Miki Dallon until the song he wrote called “Take a Heart” became a hit for us. He came to one of the TV shows we were doing to say hello, and that’s how we met.

UT: “Take a Heart” was previously recorded by Boys Blues. How did that song come into your repertoire?

DF: John Schroeder, our producer at Pye, found it for us amongst several demos he passed to us at the time.

UT: The single really started taking off after the pirate radio stations like Radio London and their DJ Kenny Everett started hyping it?

DF: We were becoming really big on the London scene at this time, we were playing all the big London gigs, and had created a strong fan base in the London area, so we got every TV show that was going that’s what I believe put us in the charts.

UT: Your drummer Bruce Finlay didn’t actually play on “Take a Heart,” but session drummer Tony Fennell did?

DF: Tony Fennell did play the drums on the actual recording that day as Bruce Finlay’s wife was in hospital. But Bruce spent a full two days with him to show him what to play prior to us going down to Pye studios. It shows how busy the studios were then, as they couldn’t rearrange another date to allow Bruce to come with us later.

UT: When “Take a Heart” became a smash hit, you recorded both German and Italian language versions. How was it like for a Midlands lad to try and sing in a strange language?

DF: I already had a fairly good command of the German language as we had toured the club scene all over Germany, so the German version wasn’t a hassle for me. However, the Italian version was a different matter. I had to write it down exactly as it sounded in English and we recorded it line by line!

UT: The Sorrows were a hard working band. You held several residencies at various clubs and even played at Coventry City’s Highfield Road ground during halftime?

DF: We were the favorite band of the chairman at Coventry City Football Club. He looked on us as a good luck charm. We played at a party when they were promoted from the fourth to the third division. So next year when they went from third to second division, we played at that celebration as well. So the next year as they were heading towards the first division, any crucial cup games we were asked to go down and play on the pitch prior to the kickoff. And it worked; they stayed in the first division for over 20 years.

UT: Having a record in the charts also meant that you got to appear on Ready Steady Go! and shows like that?

DF: There was not a TV pop show in Europe we didn’t do. We toured with all the chart names from America and the UK. I became friendly with some of the biggest international stars of the time, and still am.

UT: Would you care to name any names?

DF: The artists I have remained friends with are PJ Proby, Dave Berry, John D Loudermilk, Dave Lee Travis, the Hollies, the Tremeloes, James Burton from Elvis’ and Ricky Nelson’s bands. And I was friends with Roy Orbison until his untimely death, but still have contact with Barbara his widow, who is a super lady. Roy and I shared an interest in motorbikes, I still ride a Kawasaki ZRX1200; it’s a real adrenalin rush, It accelerates so fast it feels like it’s trying to pull your arms out the sockets!

UT: You and bassist Phil Packham left the Sorrows at the same time in 1966. What lead to the split?

DF: The Sorrows split because Phil Packham decided he had met the girl he wanted to marry. Unfortunately her father wouldn’t allow his daughter to marry some longhaired git in a pop band! So to our surprise he turned up one day for a gig with a short back and sides, and announced he was leaving to get married. We were all dumbfounded, and none of us believed it would happen. But we were just about to embark on a four month tour in Italy, which I thought was too long to be away, on one hit. I also didn’t like the idea of a change in band members, and the two or three people they were suggesting. So I decided to call it a day as well and go do it alone. Not a bad move as it turned out was it?

UT: What was your initial reaction when the band continued in Italy with Roger Lomas as lead guitarist and Pip Whitcher switched to lead vocals?

DF: My reaction when the Sorrows split was as it is when anything comes to an end, Ah well, that was that then, time to move on. I have made it one of my main focuses in life not to dwell on the past, always look ahead. You can’t change [the past], so live with it and move on.

UT: I am sure that you know that the Sorrows nowadays are classified as “freakbeat.” What do you think of that?

DF: I have come across this expression, “freakbeat,” but I don’t know what it means. Someone in this world is always trying to pigeonhole everything. We were just a bunch of guys who had a raw and exciting sound for the time we were together, and it made us stand out from the crowd. I have always believed that had we had better management we could have been one of the biggest bands around. The people who had hold of the reins were amateurs, and as such missed thousands of opportunities to promote and advance us.