Do you know: during the 60’s peak, Record companies were sending their producers all over the country, armed with recording contracts in their pockets, with instructions to ‘sign ‘em up!’ Unbelievable! And Managers were ‘Gods’ in their own right. If he or she said ‘Wear some ridiculous outfit and dye your hair blue’, that’s exactly what you did! The Beatles was pure Epstein: the hair, the suits; image! And everyone followed ‘suit’. Image was everything: and there were artists and groups, aplenty, who had just that.
Bowie, Kiss and Boy George went the whole hog and became the image!
Me? I stayed with the Big Blonde hair and the flowing gowns and chic outfits that I made my trademark way back in the Working Men’s Club’s of Stoke-on-Trent. And the beautiful songs and ballads I love to this day.
In the middle of the British Music Explosion, when I auditioned for Pye Records, Louis Benjamin, the big boss, was heard to say, ‘She’s too good. What are we going to do with her?’ A big compliment, I suppose. Pye did sign me up, and I became known as ‘One Take Trent’ in recording studios. Why? Because some artists/groups relied on the trickery of multiple takes (I remember ‘take 140’ for one group??)
The engineers just had to be brilliant, at times, finding single notes to pin together with some artists’ recordings. Not all and certainly not me: one take, living and breathing the song. Mostly, there was not another take in me because I always give everything I have. I step into the role and live the lyric.
Those were the days of big orchestra’s and I still remember the brass and rhythm sections crowding into the control room, after laying down a track, to listen to what we had all put together! A hearty lot generally, the brass and rhythm sections!
No-one was more surprised than me when, one Monday morning in May 1965, Evie Taylor, my manager, traced me back stage at The Palace Theatre, Manchester. She called to say, ‘I think ‘Where Are You Now’ is going to be a hit. It sold 75,000 this morning.’ And three weeks later it went to No 1…. The song wasn’t even aimed at the ‘Pop’ market. We wrote it for a Granada TV series –It’s Dark Outside. Obviously, people liked what they heard, enough to knock The Beatles’ ‘Ticket To Ride’ off the No.1 spot!
10 long years (almost to the day) on the road as a pro
17 years on from that cutie Bignall End Babe