Brian Bennett - Eurovision 1973

[shadnutter]

Takes yer back to the good old days, nice song bet Cliff wishes he still had a mop like that,

[StuartD]

Hi

There's certainly some song writing talent in that band!!

Regards

Stuart

[alewis41]

Hi Stuart,

I was thinking that same thing. Also some major league guitar players - Britten, Tarney and Farrar!

Good find, Phil! Thanks for posting.

[StuartD]

Hi Alan

As a little aside to that, I was with Kevin Peek and John at Hull when they backed Olivia and we were talking about who was the best guitarist in the world. And I said 'well at least I'm the best guitarist in my street!!' and John agreed that he was too. Kevin however was not too impressed because he said he lived in the same street as Terry Britten!!

Some great talent around the Cliff organisation at that time.

Regards

Stuart

[tim.cooper5]

Hi All,

Slightly off-topic, but adding to what Stuart said, about the great talent arround Cliff at that time;

I think one of the many reasons that Cliff had a good career, was that he had many good musicians (including The Shadows of course!) over the years in his backing band.

Fron what I have read in books etc, a lot of it was down to the rarely mentioned David Bryce.

Tim

[StuartD]

Hi

David Bryce was very influential in the careers of both Cliff and the Shadows. He was, of course, Dickie Valentine's brother and started out in Music Publishing. He was a total professional, a perfectionist and a thoroughly nice bloke as well. Always helpful and obliging. The Shads loved him!!

Regards

Stuart

[neil2726]

Cliff has been documented as saying his success was due to surounding himself with brilliant musicians!

[cockroach]

Although John Farrar was and is a great musician and songwriter, he was from Melbourne, so I only saw him on TV, whereas Kevin Peek, Terry Britten, Alan Tarney and Trevor Spencer were all based in Adelaide with their various bands, and I saw them all play live nearly every time they played from late 1964 to about 1968.

I learnt most of my basic guitar playing from standing in front of and closely watching Kevin Peek and (occasionally) Terry Britten every Saturday night when I was a lad!!

Didn't have any girlfriends but I learnt a lot of chords and lead breaks!

Sad isn't it?