Tony Rivers' book

[LindaW]

Hi all,

Many of you will know, or remember Tony Rivers ex of Castaways, Harmony Grass and backing vocalist for Cliff. He is writing a book about his life in showbusiness with many anecdotes and photos to be included of many, many artists and about working in the business in general. He wrote this about it on his Facebook page:

' It is going to be full of great photos and obviously the stories of people I've worked with, such as CLIFF RICHARD/ SHAKING STEVENS including a No.1 'Merry Xmas Everyone'/ ELTON JOHN/ GEORGE MICHAEL/ INXS/ PINK FLOYD/ THE WHO/ singing on the mic with HANK & BRUCE for a couple of Shadows albums/ ALAN PARSONS PROJECT/NICK HEYWARD/SAINT ETIENNE/ SHEENA EASTON/ THE BEATLES/ THE ROLLING STONES/ ERIC CLAPTON/THE BEACH BOYS/ ROGER DALTREY/RECORDING IN london WITH THE CRICKETS and Buddy Hollies friend BOB MONTGOMERY/Recording @ Caribou Studios/Abbey Road and many more/ WEMBLEY STADIUM/LIVE AID/ SCREAMING LORD SUTCH/ PHIL EVERLY/FREDDIE STARR/helping to discover UK 60's icon SANDIE SHAW/LULU/LINDA RONSTADT/STEVE HARLEY & COCKNEY REBEL/ TOP OF THE POPS ALBUMS/ SINGING THE 'LIKELY LADS' THEME/ making the West Ham record 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles'/ getting signed by BRIAN EPSTEIN/SEEING BUDDY HOLLY 'LIVE' AND PAUL McCARTNEY asking me to tell him about it! Lots of stories of the men behind the songs. Being there and a part of the 60's musical revolution'.

He is just trying to gauge the amount of interest (of people who think they would like to buy the book once it's published) out there. I offered to let Shadows fans on here know as there are bound to be quite a few mentions of working with Bruce and Hank in particular, as well as Cliff. There has been a lot of interest on his Facebook page but not everyone is keen on FB.

If anyone is interested in this book could they possibly let Tony know by sending him a simple 'yes please' email to tonyrivers.esp@gmail.com

Thank you in advance from Tony

[AlanMcKillop]

Tony posts some great stuff (incl. pics) on Facebook, the book will be a great read.

[tim.cooper5]

Hi All

Sounds like it would be a good read.

On his website, he does a very good account of his time working with Cliff.

In my opinion, the 10 years or so, that Tony was in Cliff's backing band, it was Cliff's best ever backing band. (Apart from when The Shads was with Cliff of course!).

I hope it does well.

Tim

[Martin Page]

I remember seeing Tony Rivers and The Castaways at Barking Assembly Hall in the early sixties. The band was Barking's biggest group after Brian Poole and The Tremeloes. In fact Ricky West's predecessor in The Tremeloes, Graham Scott joined The Castaways and Rick who had been playing in The Castaways then joined the Trems, i.e. they swapped places!

Martin.

[JimTidmarsh]

When my son & daughter were at secondary school in Chelmsford in the early 90s, someone on the school PTA obviously had some good music contacts since they organised several fund raising dances in the school hall featuring Tony Rivers and Mick Clarke (The Rubettes). The pair of them were brilliant & really entertaining - just two guitars and a sequencer/drum machine. They also featured a couple of instrumentals.

I recently reminded Tony Rivers of this via Facebook and he replied how much him & Mick enjoyed themselves, getting back to their roots and being in front of an appreciative crowd.