Sixties pop show heading for Bradford (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Sixties pop show heading for Bradford

9:02am Friday 3rd February 2012 in News By Jim Greenhalf

What is it about the 1960s that won’t fade away?

After solid gold and solid silver Sixties shows, here comes the All Star 60s, a show featuring members of The Merseybeats, The Rockin’ Berries, The Dakotas and The Tremeloes, on in Bradford this month.

Len ‘Chip’ Hawkes, London-born singer-songwriter with the latter band for many years, has an answer to that question which boils down to three words: heart and soul.

“We didn’t have the technology compared to today. When we started, studios were basic. Our first hit, Here Comes My Baby, was recorded live in a studio in Denmark Street. If you didn’t have a hit record in an hour you didn’t have a record. That’s why the Sixties records are so energetic to listen to,” he added.

Before music took over he was a chippie, an apprentice carpenter, hence the nickname. It was perhaps with that in mind that he commented wryly on the money he made from co-writing the Tremeloes’ hit record (You’re My) Number One in 1968.

“It sold half-a-million copies in four months. I am pleased and proud, but we actually made nothing out of it. I think it paid for the garden shed,” he said.

His daughter Keeley, however, makes a “shedload of money” as a jobbing songwriter in Los Angeles by adding words and melodies to backing tracks sent to her by companies in Sweden, Denmark and England.

“I say to her, ‘Don’t you want to sit down at a piano and write a song from the heart?’ She says, ‘It’s my job’. I know she’s had a lot of hits. She prefers not to go on stage although she used to be a backing singer.

“I belong to a totally different era, like Gerry Marsden. We are dinosaurs, but I love getting on stage. “When I am singing a song I have written for The Tremeloes, (there are at least 15, although Chip says he hasn’t counted them), I go back to the day I wrote it and presented it and the reaction of the boys. It becomes part of you.

“I have always said that when I got fed up of going on stage the guitar will be hung up on the wall and forgotten. I still get that gut excited feeling going to the gig,” he added.

He did try his hand at management for a couple of years. Chesney Hawkes, his son, had a No 1 hit with Nik Kershaw’s song The One And Only. But Chip missed playing on stage and so formed The Chip Hawkes Band and toured successfully all over Europe.

Composite bands such as All Star 60s reflect the old ethos of a bygone age when package tours made up of different acts were sent out on the road to promote their records.

Playing with Chip will be Tony Crane from The Merseybeats, Geoff Turton from The Rockin’ Berries and Toni Baker and Pete Hilton from The Dakotas.

“It’s all hits, four sets of hit after hit,” Chip said.

* All Star 60s is on at St George’s Hall on February 22, starting at 7.30pm. To book, ring (01274) 432000.