The Wildcats

The Wildcats started with Marty Wilde in 1958. I remember Bobby Woodman and Tex Makins coming up to me in the 2 I's coffee bar and asking me if I would like to join Marty Wildes Band. This was fantastic to me because I had, only the week before, been to the Chiswick Empire to see Marty. He appeared with the John Barry 7 and Vick Flick was on guitar. They said to me the only problem was we had to have our hair dyed BLOND!!! After about 5 seconds of deep thought I agreed and went with Bobby and Tex To have my hair dyed. (The picture on the left shows me and Bobby on tour.) Unfortunately I don't have any other photo's of the original Wild cats. The members of the group were Tex Makins on BASS, Bobby Woodman on DRUMS, Alan Le Clair on PIANO, Tony Becher on RHYTHM Guitar and me on Lead Guitar. I remember then going to the rehearsal rooms where Marty was rehearsing for the OH BOY TV show. When we arrived I felt very out of place, these 5 blonde haired misfits looked as if they were already stars and had come to audition for the OH BOY show. Anyway Marty had a listen to us and some other musicians that were there for audition with Marty. One person inparticular was 14 year old guitarist Colin Green. I wasn't told that we were going for an audition, I was told we had the job. As it happened Marty liked my guitar playing and the rest of the band. So we became the Wildcats. We did a summer season in Blackpool and a 2 month tour. I think that the behaviour of Tex, Alan and Bobby was a bit over the top for Marty. Bobby used to carry a big axe on the stage with him to knock nails in the stage to stop his drums moving. The only problem was he did this in the middle of the show.

Anyway Marty decided to get rid of the band except Tony and myself, we were augmented by Brian 'Liquorice' Locklin BASS and Brian Bennett on DRUMS. This was the group that everybody remembers as the wildcats. This was the group that backed Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. We also did Marty's 1st album "Wilde About Marty" and all the singles from "Teenager in Love" on wards. We played a summer season in Bournemouth with Al Read & Dora Bryan. The Tiller girls were also on the show. As you can imagine lots of fun was had by all. On the 1st half of the show the four of us had to walk across a darkened stage, made out to be an underwater scene, dressed in black coveralls carrying a big luminous fish on the top of poles. You couldn't see us, in our black suits, only the fish. On the side of the poles were handles, these handles made the fins on the side of the fish wave like wings. The whole stage was lit by ultraviolet light and consequently anything light or white would shine in the dark. It was the days of the luminous socks and we used to roll our trousers up, take off our shoes and dance across the stage waving these stupid fish. Our socks would glow in the dark and all you could see was these luminous green, pink and yellow socks prancing across the stage. On top of this there was a young lad, obviously from RADA or some other stage school, swinging about over our heads on fly wires, making out to be a merboy. We used to try and knock him with the fish. When the stage manager asked us what we were doing we told him the fish were hungry. We were asked to stop doing this more than once. The last straw came when we locked the boy in his room and dropped the key down the drain. we then got our wish, they said we would not be allowed to take part in the show any more. So, much to our delight, we were banned from the stage except for Marty's act. So this was the Wildcats, not so wild, the truth is we were into studying music more than we were being part of show business. We used to sit in the dressing room and ask each other music questions, you know things like what is meant by 'Allegro con Motto' What is ment by 'con sorda' and the like.