Guitarist Peter Thorp was in The Roulettes from the very first day (17 September 1961) till the break-up sometime at the end of 1967 (bar a week or so in Wolverhampton in August 1962 when Adam Faith thought it fit to replace him by Brian Parker of The Hunters).

(based on the interview I did with Peter Thorp on 20 July 2017 at his home)
All texts are © Eddy Bonte. Pictures all All RIghts Reserved

 

(2) RECORDING WITH RICHARD ANTHONY

 

On 10 March 1967, French superstar Richard Anthony released another English-language single on EMI in the UK: ‘Put Your Head on My  Shoulder’ (P. Anka) b/w ‘ Wish You Could Be Here’ (P. Simon / Woodley). The A-side is arranged, conducted and produced by Tony Meehan, the flipside is arranged, conducted and produced by Harry Robinson.

Richard Anthony is no stranger to The Roulettes. After Adam Faith and The Roulettes went separate ways in early 1966, the foursome soon accepted Richard Anthony’s proposal to become his touring band – travelling all over Europe.
Little is documented about The Roulettes studio recordings with Anthony, but Peter Thorp is sure he’s on ‘Wish You Could Be Here’.

Peter Thorp: “I don’t know if all the band were there, but they must have been ‘cause anything we’d do with Richard Anthony I’m sure all of us were involved. Well, I know I definitely did it, probably on my way to the studio. I just remember going in there with this little acoustic guitar I’d bought for someone. I went in to see him and I ended up playing like on a podium to a backing track of this song with the guitar part on the front. If you listen to it, it’s all in a lot of echo and it’s a picky little acoustic guitar thing. It was like acoustic guitar-picking out the notes, it’s a nice song actually, written by Paul Simon. That was it, basically. But it’s 1967, it’s Richard Anthony, it’s the year after we toured with him. He was obviously in EMI making a record and I happened to be there at the same time with this little acoustic guitar, I can’t remember more details about that. I don’t even remember getting a studio fee; it was incredible in those days, wasn’t it? We were so blind”.

Peter Thorp: “How we met, is in Bob’s book [1]. We did a show called ‘A Tale of Two Rivers’ [2] for a guy called Guy Mansfield at Southern TV. We were hired, basically, as a studio band and we backed all the different artists in the show. When we did the backing for him, he asked us what we were up to in the Summer. We had just about left Faith and we said ‘not a lot’. Anyway, he asked if we’d tour Europe with him. This is what we did, you know the rest…”.

NOTE: Drummer Bob Henrit remembers The Roulettes backing Richard Anthony at Abbey Road when he recorded ‘Baby’, his adaptation of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Out Of Time’. ‘Baby’ is on an EP which was released in 1966 (cat.no. ESRF 1785)

References
[1] Bob Henrit: ‘Banging On!’, published by Bank House Books, 2013, pp. 46 and ff).  
[2] “Pop artists perform on a converted torpedo boat in English with the boat travelling the River Thames, and perform in French with the boat travelling the River Seine”, quoted from  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2819984/?ref_=nv_sr_3 . According to Disc and Music Echo, filming started on June 1. The show was released in episodes, see https://www.petulaclark.net/membersonly/covergirl/disc66.html

(Eddy Bonte, on this website 23Mch 2019)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Richard Anthony single feat. Peter Thorp (courtesy of P. Thorp)

 

 

(1) THE BILLY COTTON BAND TV SHOW

20 January 1962, BBC (Season 8, Episode 6,
see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1785772/?ref_=ttep_ep1)

Peter Thorp:
“There’s one thing which stays in my mind  and will probably stay in my mind forever, because it was the experience of a lifetime. At the time, and that was in the early days when we were a trio, Adam Faith was on the Billy Cotton Band TV show. It must have been very early in the first band. I had a red Fender Strat and because I had a red Fender Strat, everybody thought ‘same as the Shadows, da da da’. So, we were gonna do the instrumental ‘Theme from A Summer Place’ as the band, but what Billly Cotton did in the end is that he got me to sit in with his band and it was amazing! When you’re surrounded by 20 or more fantastic musicians and the beautiful sound they’re making around your playing – that’s just an experience I’ll never forget. It’s just one of those things that has stuck in my mind and it’s sort of a highlight of my life really and it was on TV, in black and white though, so the red Stratocaster had nothing to do with it ‘cause it came out as a black and white Stratocaster!”.

Q: Is that show on record?
Peter Thorp: “Well, this sounds daft, but a friend of mine used to work as a trucker for the BBC – this is many years ago - and he went into the archives to see what he could find, and so much of it had been destroyed. There’s no record of this show”.

NOTE: Drummer Bob Henrit, who joined  The Roulettes in the early days of May 1962, remembers a different, but equally impressive Billy Cotton appearance: “We also did TV shows, like The Billy Cotton Band Show, which gave me what was for many years my biggest musical thrill. We played an earlier Adam Faith hit called ‘Lonesome’, and Billy’s orchestra came in behind us halfway through. No kidding, it was like being lifted up and pushed along”. (Bob Henrit in his autobiography ‘Banging On!’, p.27, published by Bank House Books, 2013).  

(on site 23Mch2019)