I was born in Fauldhouse, then a mining village in central Scotland. At the age of only 17 in the early 1960’s two friends; Jimmy Young and John Carty and I began running ‘Record Hops’ – the forerunner of Discos in the 70’s, although we played Pop and Soul music as Disco music was not around at that time. At first it was for local charities, who fairly quickly decided that they did not want to be associated with Pop Music (Certainly changed times!) and so we started running it for ourselves. At the time I remember I was earning the grand total of £3 per week working in Edinburgh and later £3-50 per week in Uphall with Wimpey in Civil engineering! – I remember going to Royston in Glasgow among the first skyscraper projects in Scotland and the Loch Ewe hydro electricity project
Beginning to End
After a couple of years Jimmy and John went off and got themselves married and I moved on to promoting Dancing and Concerts and being a part-time agent for several bands in central Scotland. I became a right little entrepreneur, although I did not even know the word at the time!
During this time I promoted many stars of the time including; The Spencer Davies Group featuring Steve Winwood who I had a row with because I had charged 10 shillings (50 Pence!) entrance (despite the fact I had two supporting bands!). Then Van Morrisons ‘Them’ had a full house, but their agent scampered with their fee and they came hunting for me with guns (literally) blazing and shooting up the Fauldhouse village. Sandy Shaw Alex Harvey and then other stars from the late fifties and early sixties including Johnny Kidd and The Pirates, Heinz etc and of course the top Scottish groups like ‘The Golden Crusaders’ ‘Tommy and the Apaches’
At the same time my brother Harry, a drummer, had joined a 5 piece group by the name of ‘The Premiers’ who played a real mixture of 60’s Pop, in particular featuring a lot of ‘The Hollies’ harmony numbers. ‘The Premiers’ then became one of the first Scottish groups to get into Tamla Motown, thanks to some of the USA bases in Scotland. I did all the driving touring Scotland and the North of England because I owned the van and nobody else had a licence!
‘The Premiers’ who are all still friends, with the exception of the late Bill Lawrence, eventually broke up and my brother Harry, the drummer, the singer Ian Ellis who also played bass and Billy Ritchie on piano/organ set up 1-2-3 and we all headed for the bright lights of London in the mid-sixties.
Within a few months 1-2-3 were signed by the legendary Brian Epstein and joined ‘The Beatles’ agency NEMs with ‘The Bee Gees’, and ‘Cream’ – Guess who did not make the BIG time?
At the same time 1-2-3 were signed up for a residency in the world famous Marquee Club where they met the then unknown David Bowie who became a life-long friend. 1-2-3 actually played on Davids first demos and were featured in all of his autobiography’s. There followed a famous gig at The Savile theatre with Jimi Hendrix and later they had ‘jamming’ sessions with Hendrix and Eric Burdon of ‘The Animals’ fame at ‘The Bag of Nails’ club.
My Pop business experiences and stories I obtained in Scotland and in London I used as part of the background for my first series of Spearing and Devlin novels.
In the 1970’s I went back into the Engineering Defence industries in England. It was during the following years that I worked for defence companies and there was a series of mysterious deaths of employees. There were rumours of MI5 involvement and of the UK Government involvement. Certainly, some of the Coroners verdicts into the deaths were, to say the least, scandalous.
In the Detectives Spearing and Devlin series I have used some of these incidents and created fictional people to be involved in highlighting the plight of some of these families who have never had closure.
On a personal front as a youngster I was brought up as a strict Christian, but as I have aged I have formed very strong opinions regarding all types of religion.
I believe that governments throughout the world have encouraged all forms of religion in order to control the masses. The facts are to a large extent throughout the ages it has actually worked!
The problem with religion is that throughout history so many organisations and governments have manipulated people’s belief in the hereafter. Perhaps the supreme example was the middle ages in Europe with the Witch hunts when at least 40,000 ‘Witches’ were hanged or burned alive and another 40,000 or so ‘disappeared’ in prisons. Modern day investigations have revealed that it was all a battle between Catholics and Protestants throughout Europe to win the souls (and far more important the money) of the people.
Then there were the Crusades which started the Christians versus Islam’s or Arabs wars, which lasted for over 200 years with hundreds of thousands dead. Of course as we all know the Islam wars carry on, but at a much lower level, to this day.
It was not so long ago we had the Irish troubles with Catholics against Protestants leaving thousands dead and injured and that particular trouble is not finished! Not to mention, the biggest monstrosity of them all with the Nazis and the Russians prosecution and slaying of millions of Jewish people – men, women and children - just for being Jews.
I thought I had heard it all when I read about the Catholic Church getting very rich and powerful, because they told people you could not get into heaven unless you were a fully paid up member of the Catholic Church (10% of ALL earnings!) . Then of course we had the Americans setting up churches like confetti on get quick rich schemes. Then the ultimate put down! In Thailand, visiting a Buddhists Temple with my Thai lawyer – I had been developing an interest in Buddhism – I watched as thousands of Thai’s walked up to a very senior monk and handed over their very hard earned cash before getting a private very short conversation with the very senior Monk. When I asked what was going on I was told the people were paying to get into their Buddhist heaven – depending on how much they paid they were guaranteed to get into a certain level. (Lowest pre-set amount was the lowest level etc!).
All I can say to finish on religion is to recall some of the words in John Lennon's wonderful song ‘Imagine’ - “No religion too “ - “Imagine all the people living life in peace” - Yes I agree the whole song showed naivety - after all could Governments, Religions and Zealots ever allow that to happen?
I am now non-political, but for many years like millions of others I realised that the majority of Politicians do not really care about Joe Public. No matter what they personally thought about any situation they voted with their parties – Job protection etc which most of us working people can understand, although sometimes thinking they should have some backbone.
So was it not ironic when the great Brexit debate came along and at last we found so many politicians standing up with their conscience and voting against their parties because they believed it was harmful to the country – only to be accused by their bosses and the masses to be incompetent because they dared to reject a bad deal! Certainly ironic!
Again other words from John Lennons ‘Imagine’ springs to mind; “”Imagine there’s no countries” – “It isn’t hard to do” – “Nothing to kill or die for.” Again naïve words, countries giving up their borders and their people? – It is beyond imagination!
I was brought up in a large family with; Mum, Dad, Granny, 3 sisters, 2 brothers and a cousin who was brought up as a brother. We were brought to believe family members were more important than anybody else and to look out for each other.
I have tried to instil the same principals in my family son and daughter and five grandchildren, but with the changing generations and different attitudes, I just don’t know how successful I have been.
Writing my books is a total form of escapism for me. Each of my characters have a little of me in them, or at a minimum something that I would like to have done.
My two children, now in middle age and five grandchildren were all born in England and are very much English people. I am very proud to be Scottish, but for obvious reasons I have absolutely no time for this Scottish versus English thing.
One of my Scottish friends who I had known since junior school fell out with me on Facebook a couple of years ago and has never communicated with me since. It was all about the SNP demanding another referendum and because I disagreed with very logical arguments - I was illogically accused of being a Tory - complete nonsense!