This is an extra anecdote from Brian Meredith’s recollections from his childhood in the 1950s, which he describes as ‘a place which simply does not exist any more. Not in any significant aspect or detail’.
In his introduction he wrote: ‘In the 1950s, England was a more gentle place, where people seemed to have more time for each other. Nowhere was this more evident than in the interactions between grown-ups and the children. These days, the mutual aloofness and distance which routinely characterises encounters between strangers across the ‘generation gap’ make it difficult for anyone too young to remember to picture just how safe, friendly and perhaps, equally important for a child eager to explore the world around him, simply how accommodating the England of my childhood really was.’
You can read the previous anecdotes, which illustrate the sort of unconditional kindness that a child might receive from complete strangers at that time, here.
BEFORE the war, swing jazz had met with a certain amount of disapproval on account of it being so loud and brash, but with rock and roll perhaps for the first time a music aimed at teenagers was the object of fear and suspicion by the older generation. Not just because of its sheer raucousness, but because the wildness of the music was often matched by anarchic words and this combination was felt to deliberately encourage the antisocial behaviour and vandalism which had come to be associated with it. Misbehaviour, according to newspaper reports, included the slashing of cinema seats when the movie of Rock Around the Clock was shown in London.
But in the autumn of 1958, when I was ten, I read that a rock ’n’ roll package tour, headlined by none other than Tommy Steele, was to play live on stage at the Rugby Granada cinema (pictured above; it closed as a theatre in 1976 and was demolished in 2011 after operating as a bingo hall). I was excited and asked my parents if I could go. This they took this to mean that one of them would have to take me and so the answer was an unequivocal ‘no’.
‘I’m not sitting through that row and besides, there might be trouble,’ was Dad’s response to my request. But Tommy Steele was the biggest name in British pop music in those early years just before Cliff Richard swept the board, and I was determined to go. So I gathered up my pocket money, cycled into town and bought a ticket. It was for the first show; I was fairly sure that if there was going to be any ‘trouble’ it would be much more likely during the later performance. I also took the precaution of booking a seat at the end of the aisle so I wouldn’t feel hemmed in by all those full-sized adults. My third hedge against any trouble was to book a more expensive seat upstairs in the gallery, rather than in the ‘bear pit’ downstairs.
Despite all this, Mum was still worried about my going, but Dad was very practical and did what he always did and made a plan. The Town Clerk’s office where he worked was only a little way from the theatre and so he arranged that I would come into town on the bus, meet him at six o’clock outside the venue and he would see me safely into the theatre. His plan was to go back to the office and put in two or three hours overtime and return to the theatre in time to meet me when the show finished. Whereupon we would go home together on the bus.
In those days cinemas and theatres employed ushers and usherettes to help customers find their seats. When the usherette saw that here was a small boy, just turned ten and ‘small for his age’ at that, planning to be on his own in this large theatre at an event like this, she showed me to my seat, and promised that she would return. The sight of such a young boy at a rock ’n’ roll gig must have touched her maternal instincts, because as soon as she was done with her ushering duties, she returned and sat on the carpeted stairs right next to my seat to see that no harm came to me. It was very kind of her, as she leaned in towards me and rested her forearm on the arm of my seat. With her sitting so close, I felt well protected as the house lights went down and the band started up.
The rest of the audience consisted of lads who looked like teddy boys and their dolled-up girlfriends, all of whom seemed to be wearing lots and lots of makeup, so I was glad my mother wasn’t there to embarrass me by loudly expressing how ‘common’ they all looked. It was a strange and exciting environment for a Sunday School boy and while there was no actual trouble, they were very noisy and vocal in their displays of appreciation, which did give some impression of rowdyism, albeit fairly superficial.
In the interval, my guardian angel took me to the refreshment room, where she treated me to a bottle of lemonade with a straw. When the show was over, she delivered me back to Dad, who was waiting for me in the foyer, as agreed. I told him about the lemonade and he offered her the money, but she wouldn’t take any reimbursement. Realising how conscientiously she had looked after me, he thanked her profusely and as was the habit for parents in those days, he asked her if I’d been ‘a good boy’ and thankfully, she told him that I’d been ‘as good as gold!’
So, all in all, thanks to the combination of my stubborn refusal to be denied, Dad’s gift for organising workable solutions to problems and the extreme kindness and generosity of the lady with the torch, the evening turned out a complete success. It was to have far-reaching implications. I may have gone in to see Tommy Steele singing and strumming his guitar, but I came out of the show in no doubt that one day, in the not too-distant future, I was going to play the drums.
