Cliff Richard

Love him or hate him, Cliff Richard figured large in my early years. He always seemed to be providing the soundtrack to my summer holidays (no pun intended). My holidays in Skegness each year were played out to songs like Congratulations, Tin Soldier, Don't talk to him, Goodbye Sam, Hello Samantha and Lucky Lips .

Cliff Richard and The Shadows were the first group I got really excited about. They looked good, they sounded great (and they even did the synchronized stepping thing!).  Forget Elvis and The Beatles, these boys had it all (and a double-decker bus thrown in for good measure). They even featured in the Thunderbirds Are Go movie - How much cooler could you get?

Cliff was born Harry Rodger Webb in Lucknow, India, on October 14th 1940 to Rodger and Dorothy. One sister, Donella, was born three years later, and another (Jacqueline) in 1948. That same year the family boarded the troopship SS Ranghi and moved to Britain with £5 between them. They moved into a room in Carshalton, Surrey, where young Harry attended the Stanley Park Road primary school. The family moved to Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire in 1950 - the same year that his youngest sister, Joan, was born. 

Harry Webb left school in 1957 with one 'O' level in English, and a Skiffle group called The Quintones, which he had formed with school friends. He moved on to the Dick Teague Skiffle Group before finally setting up a Rock & Roll group called The Drifters, with Teague. Their first manager, John Foster, was strongly of the opinion that 'Harry Webb & The Drifters' held little magic for prospective booking agents, and after much deliberation Foster chose 'Cliff Richard'.

In the summer of 1958 (with money borrowed from Foster's parents) Cliff Richard recorded his first demo record at HMV's Oxford Street record store in London. He chose two cover versions, Jerry Lee Lewis's Breathless and Lloyd Price's Lawdy Miss Clawdy. 

After regular gigs at the 2I's coffee shop in Soho and a spot in a talent show at the Gaumont Theatre in Edmonton, entrepreneur George Ganjou took Cliff's demo to Norrie Paramor, A&R Manager for Columbia-EMI.

Suitably impressed, Paramor took Cliff and The Drifters into Abbey Road Studios to record a handful of tracks. The first single was intended to be a version of Bobby Helm's Schoolboy Crush but the public preferred the B-side, Move It (written by Ian Samwell) and pushed it to Number 2 on the British charts in November 1958. In September the group debuted on national television on Jack Good's popular Oh Boy! music show. 

In December 1958 another Samwell composition (High Class Baby) went to Number 7 and early the next year, Cliff and The Drifters embarked on their first British headlining tour, with Wee Willie Harris and Jimmy Tarbuck as support acts. The third single, Livin' Lovin' Doll, peaked at Number 20 in January 1959 and Cliff won the Best New Singer award in the annual New Musical Express readers' poll.

We all know now that Cliff Richard is hardly a bad boy, but back in 1958 he was the enfant terrible of the British music scene - considered to be a corrupting influence on teenagers and definitely too hot for television. The TV show that earned Cliff such an awful reputation was Oh Boy!, the ITV pop show which reflected the change in musical tastes and in youngsters generally. In 1957, Cliff had been an unknown £4-a-week clerk called Harry Webb, but Oh Boy! rocketed him to fame and parental disapproval.

Cliff had modeled himself on Elvis - even down to the curled lip - and was accused of 'smoldering on screen'. Newspapers attacked his "crude exhibitionism" and warned "Don't let your daughter go out with people like this". 

Cliff explained "One of my front teeth was capped and the shadow from the TV lighting made it look as though I had a tooth missing. So instead of smiling I smoldered". He also cheerfully admits "Physically, I was a greasy slob. I was probably the first bad-taste dresser in this country. I wore pink socks and a pink jacket. I used to fluoresce!". By the early sixties, Cliff could do no wrong. His audience was now expanding to encompass all ages and his next two films - The Young Ones and Summer Holiday - were box office smashes and both soundtrack albums topped the charts.

During the next two decades he continued to be amazingly successful in Britain, scoring over 70 consecutive hits - an unapproachable record! His 1979 chart topper We Don't Talk Anymore confirmed his undiminished excellence, and the number one album Love Songs two years later put him well beyond the reach of any competitors. At that time his closest rivals were The Rolling Stones, who needed eight more hit albums and 48 more hit singles to catch him!

His backing group, The Shadows, were also successful in their own right, starting in 1960 when Apache took them to number one. 

When I was a kid I wanted to be Cliff Richard more than anything in the world. I used to warm up the record player (bloody valves!) and dance around our front room singing his songs into a hair brush: Bachelor Boy, Summer Holiday, I could easily fall in love with you, Lucky Lips, Don't talk to him, Wind me up (Let me go), The day I met Marie, Congratulations, Goodbye Sam, Hello Samantha :

He had the voice, he was a "nice guy" (and a great sport on The Morecambe & Wise Show) and even represented Britain in a Eurovision Song Contest or six  . . . and then in the seventies he lost it all completely as far I was concerned and turned into a slightly naff Christian version of Peter Pan whose claim to fame was chilling out with tennis players and having the piss taken out of him by The Young Ones.  Oh well. He still provided the majority of the soundtrack of my childhood. Thanks a lot, Cliff.