Very 1964

Here's a fascinating group photograph from that wonderful month, April 1964 - when 18 year old me arrived in London. I do not know who took this shot (or is it a compilation of several pictures?) but it was at The Empire Pool, Wembley in North London. It seems all the pop stars of the time are here, apart from The Beatles who were off conquering America.

You can though see The Rolling Stones (including Brian Jones),The Searchers, Billy J Kramer, Freddie and his Dreamers, Paul Jones and Manfred Mann, Kenny Lynch, The Merseybeats and The Fourmost, plus Cilla Black (black leather coats were all the rage then for guys and gals) and Kathy Kirby and Cathy McGowan of READY STEADY GO where the weekends began!

Other 60s groups like The Yardbirds or The Moody Blues or The Kinks or Herman's Hermits, and The Who are not included, nor The Animals or Gerry and the Pacemakers or even The Dave Clark Five! but hey, not every group was there that day,  nor young Marianne Faithfull or Sandie Shaw! or Dusty ...

But this was the 1964 look, most groups wore jackets and ties - it was not until 1967 or so that the hippie look took off and lots more hair and moustaches and psychedelic clothes.

One sad note - quite a few of these here are no longer with us - but at that moment they were part of a golden age of British pop stars, mainly from the (Stones excepted) squaresville end of pop. The big music movie hit that year was of course The Beatles in Richard Lester's A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (The Beatles label).

One has to think back to what life was like in 1964 - no wonder young people were joining groups and making music. There were just two television channels, the BBC and commercial ITV, in black and white, geared to the family audience (READY STEADY GO on Fridays was about the only pop programme then catering for the teen crowd) and they closed down at night early, movies could not be shown on TV until they were 5 years old, if you wanted big screens and colour you went to the cinema. (The Third channel BBC2 and colour came in later in the Sixties, which were Swinging by then...) and in that pre-computer world typing on manual typewriters in the typing pool was normal and factory jobs were still plentiful.