At the
heart of Portsmouth’s Swinging Sixties was the Birdcage Club, Eastney, which
from 1965-1967 hosted many great acts including The Who, Small Faces, Wilson
Pickett, Ike & Tina Turner and Cream.
The club
was a Mod stronghold and among the most popular live acts was Jimmy James and
his soulful Vagabonds.
In 1966
they released their first LP The New Religion. The sleeve notes described their
popularity at the Birdcage while the front cover carried a photo of Jimmy and
the band on a Birdcage stage invaded by young dancers – including, right in the
middle, the young Cilla Gilmore, who was thrilled to be there but also
petrified in case her parents or teachers spotted it.
That
picture, posters from the club and Cilla’s story are featured in a new
publication about the English Mod scene in those days and the book’s title is
taken from that album The New Religion.
Cilla
recalls how the then Evening News ran a story when the LP was released, trying
to discover who she was. ‘I wasn’t supposed to be there, so I had to keep quiet
about it,’ she says.
Like a
number of other publications about Mods, this new one by Paul ‘Smiler’ Anderson
stresses the importance of London in the Mod scene, but it also devotes many
pages, pictures and interviews with Mods from around the country and that
includes many contributions from Portsmouth.
The
Birdcage is the main topic with its own section in the book, but there are also
references to Kimbells ballroom, Southsea, and the Rendezvous Club in Kingston
Road.
All
those years later, Jimmy James told Smiler that when playing the Birdcage ‘we
were like a family... it was like we were going round our mate’s house tonight
and we’re gonna have a party’.
John
Haynes, who ran the coffee bar in the unlicensed Birdcage, says the club was
‘like a party in your front room’.
Ted
Brooks, from Paulsgrove, describes how he stayed at school for an extra year
beyond the leaving age of 15, spent the summer working at Billy Manning’s
Funfair and ‘spent all my money on clothes’. Initially he would shop in the big
stores like C&A but he moved on to the specialist shops and tailors that
‘were all over Portsmouth because of the navy’.
Of
course Mods would not buy off-the-peg suits. Everything was made-to-measure.
Ted’s suits ‘would cost me about £10 or £12. I used to have three or four suits
made a year’.
Ted also
bought a ‘fantastic shirt’ from Hym in Arundel Street and had his hair cut
there in a salon called Executive where ‘a girl would wash your hair as you
leaned back. In those days that was something’.
As well
as dancing to records and visiting clubs, some locals played in bands and one
of the finest local R&B acts was the J Crow Combo who broke into the London
club scene.
Colin
Wood recalls how they arrived at the Club Noreik in 1964 to play, supported by
a group called the High Numbers – except that when they arrived the High
Numbers had changed their name to The Who and the J Crow Combo found themselves
playing support to the band ‘bashing their guitars up against the microphone
stand and getting lots of feedback’.
Cilla
and Ted were among those who attended the recent book launch at the Fred Perry
Store in Covent Garden, which, by chance, was featuring their new striped Southsea
Deckchairs designs.
After
all these years, Cilla is no longer keeping quiet about her moment of fame and
she was reunited that evening with Jimmy James and some of the Vagabonds – all
still swinging.
Mods:
The New Religion by Paul ‘Smiler’ Anderson, Omnibus Press 2014. ISBN:
978-1-78038-549-5. RRP £24.95.
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