Eddy Bonte

Norman Stracey: “We never wanted to be pop stars, we wanted to be musicians”

PART TWO OF TWO

see also The Roulttes facebook group https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1051434845744514&type=3

7 Assessing The Roulettes and Faith

Q: What is your opinion of The Roulettes as a group?
Norman Stracey: Weell, I went there one day and we did a session for Radio Luxembourg. I like Peter Thorp very much, a nice chap, but he wasn’t up to the job, really, musically. When we went to Radio Luxemburg and Adam Faith wanted to do all sorts of things [the formula was some instrumental hits and one Adam Faith song – EB]. Anyway, we were rehearsing. The drummer, who was a dark-haired Welsh lad, wasn’t quite up to the mark either [‘Welsh lad’ Jeff Morley was replaced by Bob Henrit in May 1962 – EB]. We had a sax player and I’m sure he was competent, but he was way out of tune, so halfway through a song I said ‘This gotta stop, we’re all out of tune, out of time’, and the sax player was way out, not just a little bit out, out of tune. I said: ‘Didn’t you realize?’ [Alan Jones joined in the Spring of 1962 and left in late Summer - EB]. It was awful, I can’t tell you how bad it was. Anyway, we got all tuned up and we carried on. But I couldn’t figure out why the sax player was there. Again, he didn’t fit in. A nice bloke again, perhaps in the music he liked it was alright, but he was lost here.

Bob and John didn’t work together as well as they should ’ve done and Peter I’m afraid was out of his depths. So, the whole band was very disjointed and sounded awful, awful!

I got on with Adam so well, a nice bloke. Take away the music and the show business, not so much the show business. He invited me at his place a couple of times, he had an old Jag car, and after gigs he invited me to his house in, this mansion where we played snooker, he had a lovely snooker room.

We got on well as long as we didn’t mention music.

When we did these Radio Luxembourg sessions, Faith wanted more tunes ‘out of the ordinary’, like a Cole Porter song which was different, and John and I suggested more Buddy Holly because Radio Luxembourg had suggested he did some Buddy Holly numbers and I said ‘You could do those well’ and he said ‘I don’t want to do those’. I suppose he realised people would discover where he got his sound from, his phrasing and everything else, but he made a fortune out of it”.
EB: “Faith’s idol was Eddie Cochran, but he couldn’t do that and so he did Buddy Holly instead”.

Norman Stracey:
“I didn’t realize that, so I suggested these numbers”.

In Faith’s house, I was reading a chess book and he a film script, maybe ‘Mix Me A Person’. We were also both interested in financials. And then it took me: we are hardly a couple of rock and rollers here! (Laugh). No drink, because he didn’t drink. No smoking, no drugs. He was very sensible about money matters, and things like that, which was very good, he paid well, he was always very generous, we went to nice restaurants, he didn’t do the bargain stuff, treated us well, we couldn’t fault him. But his music, come on, bloody hopeless. Not only that,but he was destructive because if he’d trusted the musicians around him, made sure he got a recommendation from the bloke who knows what’s he’s doing, you listen to them, but he didn’t, he didn’t have a bloody clue. But as a star, he was a new experience to us, because in the groups we’d been in it was four people putting their ideas together, and you decided what was the best thing to do, but with Faith he decided. Once we went to a recording studio and Big Jim Sullivan was there and Faith started talking to him. We could see what was going on, and apparently Sullivan was saying that Johnny and I were competent musicians. We had met Big Jim previously, so he knew we were pretty competent musician and well-suited for what the job was, but Faith never took no notice, hardly rehearsed, it was hopeless”.

EB: “Faith is said to have had many whims. In the beginning Van Dyke, Johnny Keating and John Barry were in charge and when they left Faith had to find new people”.
Norman Stracey:
“Johnny Keating! When The Roulettes recorded ‘La Bamba’ and B-side ‘Hully Gully Slip ’n’ Slide’, Keating was there and he sang on that B-side.
EB: Are you sure?
Norman Stracey: “No. There was somebody in charge of all the band, the general production side of it.

When I left or was sacked or whatever you’d like to call it, The Beatles were well and truly in charge. Whereas Peter (Thorp) hadn’t been of much use in the pre-Beatles era, which is why Faith told him to go away and practise, he was better suited when The Beatles came along because he got a good voice so he and John (Rogers) were able to back Faith and make it look like a trio if you like. When Russ came along [March 1963 – EB], he had a good voice as well, he’s good. I know him because his dad had a band. And Roy, his brother, was a good pianist, a good musician, and Russ very quickly sort of learnt his trade, he was ideal for that time and Peter was ideal for that time, he could go out and sing and play at the same time. I would have been bloody hopeless. That was a good move because Faith was going down and groups were coming along, it helped him because he realised he could take a bit of a backseat, not quite the high profile. Before, he was stuck out in the middle there and we would be all around him. Peter was more in with the times when these groups got into fashion. Peter was better suited to that sort of thing and with Russ on guitar that was better as well”.

8 Russ and Roy Ballard

Russ Ballard with a 'function' band. Courtesy of Norman Stracey.
Information on other band membrs missing. Copyright holder unknown, default copyright by Eddy Bonte.

Norman Stracey:
We went down to Russell’s house in Ware a couple of times when Brian (Parker) had died. We’d played in some groups together and we had some ideas when Brian died. Nothing came out of it. We were in Russ’ studio and he played the piano but nothing came out of it, in fact he’s lost the recordings we’d done and we lost contact. I wasn’t bothered by that time. We’re talking the 1990s here.I became friendly with Brian in the 1990s, but he died in 2001, and after that Russ and I got in touch. He talked about an American girl-singer. We had a chat, Russell is a good lad”.

EB: John ‘Mod’ Rogan told me that after The Roulettes he played in Roy Ballard’s band.
Norman Stracey:
“We’re talking 1963-64, I was playing a lot of tennis and generally enjoying my life, and I went to a dance with my first wife-to-be in Enfield and to my surprise Roy was playing and John (‘Mod’ Rogan) was in that band. I went up to talk to Roy and that’s when I first came up against John Rogan. [EB: Rogan was in The Roulettes from May 1963, replacing Rogers, till the group’s demise in late 1967].
A sad story. Roy died of a heart attack. He was a lovely bloke, completely different to Russell. He was quieter and he could play by music, his father made sure he could. I don’t know if he ever played in his dad’s band, but he was very capable”.

EB: When Roy died, the band continued, it was a ‘function’ band
Norman Stracey:
“A function band, yeah, dance halls, parties… That’s what we used to do with The Hunters when we first started out. We used to do some funny-dos in Walthamstow and Edmonton when someone got married and everyone got drunk and asked ‘Can you play this’, you know, we used to play at rugby clubs and all sorts of things. We would play the hits of the day, we were pretty good but by that time we’d lost the original drummer, can’t remember his name, and we got Norman Sheffield. He went on to manage Queen with his brother and started Trident which was very big and he got very rich. I kept contact with Norman for quite some time, but he developed cancer, badly, and we went to see him after he’d had a big spell in hospital”.

9 TERRY DENE

EB: You said that post-Roulettes you tried a few things with Terry Dene.
Norman Stracey:
“This is purely the job as a musician and we’d take anything that came along. I couldn’t care less, it was two or three jobs In London. Somebody wanted a guitar player for Terry Dene in clubs, he was having a come-back by that time, can’t remember the year, I didn’t know these musicians at all, just the key the songs were in, we just rolled out and did the best we could.
That was the Larry Parnes circuit. They were just one-offs you know, someone used to get hold of you, just one of the band or organisers phone up and say ‘Can you meet up there or there?’. One gig with Dene was in Neasden near Wembley”.

EB: By that time your mind was on something else?
Norman Stracey:
"Yes, it was finished really, I’d had enough, just wanted a normal life if you like, I did have thoughts of carrying on doing music, writing music, but I hadn’t realised you had to be in the flow and be in touch with people, that is 90% of the job. Being in touch with people, being able to push your songs to them, if you haven’t got a big-big name, trying to get your songs published. You could do the best song ever written but if you don’t have someone pushing that, you’re not getting anywhere. In those days you used to send demo discs and all that, like we used to get them for the Hunters and Dave Sampson

Normal life was the only thing I was interested in. I was so happy with all the money rolling in from Cliff’s single and I thought ‘What have I been struggling for al these years, whereas with one song…’

So I went into the Fire service, I joined the Fire service for 12 years and during that time I got myself fit again, playing lots of tennis and badminton and giving up football and other contact sports because you could get injured and not be able to go to work the next day. I enjoyed that and got friendly with a lot of policemen, I got married, so I was happy. But my marriage didn’t last of course, but that’s another thing”.

10 BRIAN PARKER cont'd

Norman Stracey:
“In 1995 Brian (Parker) and I got together again, we started playing together and we got Billy Kuy (of The Outlaws), a very good musician ‘cause he played bass with The Outlaws but could play lead guitar as well. So Brian, Norman Sheffield and I, we contacted Dave Sampson again as The New Hunters”.
EB: What came out of that?
Norman Stracey:
“Nothing, but I must have something that we did as The New Hunters - don’t know where it is now. It was good, very good”.
EB: Did you write again?
Norman Stracey:
“No, Brian and I had written ‘The Storm’ [released 1961] which got quite high in the Hit Parade, I’m talking top 50. Again, we didn’t get any money for that because being innocent like a lot of people who start in that business, and with sharks like Tito Burns who feed upon young groups and young people going in there completely ignorant and only interested in doing their songs and all that and they don’t think about anything else. We hardly got any money at all from The Storm”.

11 MISCALLENEOUS

JOHN ROGERS as a ROULETTE. Source unknown. Any copyrright owners, pleas contact us.

PAUL AMBROSE

Norman Stracey:
“Paul Ambrose, my best mate who was a guitar player I’d known for 20 years suddenly dropped dead last year. He was a brilliant guitarist and we got on very well. We practised the songs we arranged ourselves. He was into R&R, as well as into classical music. If there were any justice in the world, he would ‘ve been a professional musician, but the music is not appreciated by the youngsters. The industry is driven by teenage girls, they have the ‘fads’, in pop music, it’s only later that blokes come into it, it always has been such in commercial pop, people like Adam Faith. We used just to play for ourselves”.

PIANO
Norman Stracey:
“No, after The Hunters I wasn’t in any other band. The Hunters backed the entire show. We used to go on tour with Cliff and other singers like Neil Sedaka, Bobby Rydell, Craig Douglas … We used to back all the singers during the first half - all different singers - and Cliff would have the second half, that was the life then just to back other artists. I liked Neil Sedaka, I like the piano, so I like Billy Joel.
EB: The song-writers.
Norman Stracey: “Yes, you got it, the pianist-songwriters! You’ve got the absolute word there. I even like Barry Manilow, he’s got some nice, catchy songs, and the harmony is good”.

STRIP BAND
Norman Stracey:
“ When I finished with The Hunters I got some work with that group, forgot the name, even the pianist’s name, we used to play strip joints .. Just musicians getting together, in the flow. Just combos put together for the night, but it came to an end and I realized that it was about money and get to play the music I like. I was 19-20 when I left The Hunters”.

GUITAR SHOPS
Norman Stracey:
“When we left school we all got jobs up in London and the reason we wanted to go to London was there were loads of guitar shops out there! We used to go up there and see the latest guitars. We used to meet up there, we all worked in insurance”.

DICK TEAGUE
Norman Stracey:
“When I left Adam Faith (early 1963 – EB) I more or less gave my guitar to Dick Teague who by that time was thinking about moving somewhere and eventually moved to Lincolnshire. We went on two or three holidays abroad with him, touring in France, and they came to us here, so we got to know them very well. I stayed in touch with his widow”.
EB: What happened to him musically?
Norman Stracey: “Nothing, nothing at all. He taught his children to play the guitar, but nothing. He didn’t follow it up, a bit like me, it’s a part of your life which you’ve done and when it’s finished it’s finished. You know, when you’re in a group you end up buying lots of equipment, spending a lot of money on drums, guitars, amplifiers and things like that, and you get a singer who hardly spends anything, gets famous and off he goes! And that’s exactly what happened to Dick Tague when Cliff left. This used to happen a lot”.

THE HUNTERS
EB: The Hunters recorded several singles with Dave Sampson and several under their own name. You also put out two LPs as an instrumental group, quite exceptional at the time. You must have been very popular.

Norman Stracey:
“Yeah, we were quite popular, but we never had any stage presence. We never wanted to be pop stars, we all wanted to be musicians. I wasn’t interested in pop music as such, for itself, but it was the only thing where you could get money out. So I was interested in learning as much music as I could, educate myself in that sense, play as much as I could, try to read music better as I was never really good at reading music. John (Rogers) and Brian (Parker) were more poppy, they liked the pop and Norman (Sheffield, the drummer) liked traditional jazz. So, we all had our reasons for doing what we did, but we never had any stage presence, we didn’t try to win the crowd over, didn’t talk to the crowd or anything like that. We got there, played and that was it. We are talking about 1958-59 and in that time you didn’t have any tuition videos or anything like that, you learned as you went along. We listened to records and learned from there. It was only Brian who had the musical upbringing, though I come from a musical family but they never taught me any music theory “.

THE ROULETTES with JOHN ROGERS. Source and copyright holders unknown.

EB: When John Rogers started working with Tony Meehan, he must have been thinking about popularity … putting his stamp on something.
Norman Stracey:
“He wanted to be a studio musician: record artists, get booked for yourself, but that’s a very hard thing to get into. Very few people can do both. When you go into a studio, they just give you the music which is usually a lot of scribble, things that other people have altered, made their comments on and you look at it and think ‘god, am I supposed to play that?’. I did one session with Michael Cox (who had a minor hit with ‘Angela Jones’ - EB) and I was very lucky because I knew one of the violin players and he helped we with my part that I’d been given, but otherwise, it’s a hard thing to play by ear and play by music, it’s a difficult thing”.

RADIO LUXEMBOURG
EB: Peter Thorp told me The Roulettes did a number of studio sessions for Radio Luxemburg, the format being that The Roulettes would do some instrumentals and Faith would sing one or two songs. Now, you told me you participated in one such session but before joining The Roulettes/ How did that come about?

Norman Stracey:
“John was already in The Roulettes [he joined in the Spring of 1962 – EB] and just said to me – Eddy, I know you like Peter Thorp’ (sighs) - but John said ‘Peter isn’t up to do what we want to do on this , can you come over and give us some help?’. So, I was brought in to do other things than what they usually do. Bob (Henrit, the drummer) wasn’t there, but there was this saxophone player (Alan Jones – EB). It was nice because I could speak my mind at that time!”.

END OF PART 2 OF 2

As told by Norman Stracey to Eddy Bonte during two interviews at Stracey’s home, on 21 July 2022 and 8 March 2023. Published with the interviewee’s consent. Sincere thanks to Norman for going the extra mile and trusting me with his memorabilia, to his wife Mary for coffee and ‘light’ lunch, and to both for hospitality!

THE HUNTERS BUSINESS CARD courtesy Norman Stracey.