Transcript of interview conducted May 25 2017 Interviewee: KEN HOWE (KH) Interviewer: JAREK ZABA (JZ) Also present: LAURA APPLEBY-BOWES (LAB) Kingston-upon-Thames, England Transcription: REBECCA DOGGWILER and JAREK ZABA --- [00:00] JZ: Okay, so this is Jarek Zaba at Creative Youth HQ in Kingston upon Thames with Laura-Appleby Bowes, is it? LA: Bowes. JZ: Ah, there you go. With Laura Appleby-Bowes who is joining me, and our interviewee today is? KH: Ken Howe. [00:19] JZ: Yes, your place and date of birth if that’s okay? KH: I was actually born in Chiswick, but I was only there for two days and I’ve been in Teddington for the rest of my life. JZ: Right. nd KH: Now, that was 1945, February the 2 .​ ​ [00:36] JZ: Excellent. Great, I’m going to start the way that I’ve always started these things with all my interviewees and just get you to run me through your history with Kingston upon Thames specifically. What is your relationship with the town? KH: It’s always been the place to go shopping. I can’t honestly say that I’ve had a huge affinity to Kingston, because I’ve always had to cross the bridge to get there. I’ve been more leaning into Twickenham, but certainly there have been some good music venues in Kingston. The Grey Horse, I don’t know if you’ve come across that one before, but up until, well, a couple of months ago that was probably one of the best ones locally. But it’s funny you mentioning the old Folk Barge, I think I did actually get on that once, and… how on earth they ever got a certificate for it, well, I think things were a bit easier in those days. [01:48] JZ: Do you know what year that would’ve been, when you were got on the Folk Barge? KH: Early sixties. [01:59] JZ: Yeah, we’ll definitely get back on to all those specific venues, surely. By the way, just as a note on the interview, if you’re looking at me and I’m not saying anything and just nodding like an idiot, that’s just for the audio, it’s better for us not to make too much noise. So, if it seems a bit like we’re not responding that much, that’s the only reason. Well, we’ll get on to history and Kingston’s history in a bit, but just to- KH: The Hawker-Siddeley Social Club had a lot of music activity going on there, although it seems incredible looking at the site of it now, just all housing. I don’t know how many thousands of people were working there, but, the sports and social club was a very big leisure activity for Kingston. [02:57] JZ: Where’s that exactly? The Hawker-Siddeley, is that what you said? KH: Yeah, Hawker-Siddeley, the aircraft company. [03:04] JZ: Where physically, where geographically was that? KH: Sort of Canbury Gardens going further back towards Hamlin, you know, just bordering onto Richmond. [03:18] JZ: Okay, yeah, so that’s interesting. How about your music tastes yourself, are you… do you have any particular favourites? KH: Well, I always used to follow the Stones, but they were mainly Twickenham-based. My brother was a Who fan, he used to drag me out to Kingston a couple of times when they were performing. We actually probably saw the best of the bands at that time, at one time or another. It was one of those spots that everyone seemed to get to and you did have the big impresarios like Larry Parns, who had his own stable of British rock artists [4:08] the… Billy Fury, Joe Brown, era. And they were all packaged together and come on and do twenty minute stints each, and as a result of that, I think, the overseas bands started to come in and work on the same format. So you’d get a couple of American stars backed up by some of the lesser British bands and that would create a package. Invariably, that was in the cinemas, the old ABC that was closed, and was a bingo hall, and Granada which, I don’t know if it’s still a cinema or not, but was a nightclub for a while and I think they’ve still got one cinema screen there but, you know, for a week, they’d close them down from the cinema and it’d be, you know, performing artists. [05:13] JZ: And do yourself have any strong personal memories about specific gigs, any standouts for you? KH: Well, I remember Roy Orbison, actually, he came on stage and it was just him and his guitar, he must’ve had a backing band somewhere but they were concealed behind the curtains or in the pit or something, but he just had an incredible voice and he just filled the whole of the theatre as he was, just singing, and he was quite incredible. And the other guy was Phil Everly, the Everly brothers were supposed to be doing a tour but Don Everly OD’d on something and had to bail out at the last minute, I think he got hospitalised back to the States, and Phil Everly went alone and, you know, what he sort of lacked with his brother, he certainly made up for with his energy and gave quite a performance. [06:25] JZ: The Everly Brothers came up this morning, actually, because the guy I was interviewing was saying he tried to copy the style of the Everly Brothers. KH: Many have tried [laughs]. [06:37] JZ: Yeah, absolutely. In terms of these big names, in Kingston, was there a sense that Kingston was a kind of stop off on a wider tour, like Kingston was one of THE places to visit, kind of thing? KH: Yeah, that’s right, most of these things started in London, so came… Kingston was an early part of the touring venues. Then go up north and probably come back south through Wales and the West Country. [07:12] JZ: Were venues defined by genres? I guess we’ve got the Folk Barge because that is, I guess, but others differ perhaps, I don’t know? KH: Well, I suppose the Folk Barge was definitely a genre. There wasn’t anywhere else quite like that. But the other places were just picked as being venues that could hold fifteen hundred people, they would hope to sell out every night to cover their costs. And make a huge profit as well, no doubt. But it seems incredible that you could go and see a package with half a dozen acts on it for about ten shillings, or something like that. God knows what they’d want for that these days. Doesn’t bear thinking about. [08:18] JZ: Absolutely. Do you remember much about this night that you had on the Folk Barge? Do you remember what it was like, what the atmosphere was like, what you saw? KH: I was pretty pissed at the time, so I can’t honestly claim to remember. I was sort of making sure I didn’t go over the sides, so, bit of a sobering sort of thing. I wondered what the hell I was doing there and how on earth I’d got on in the first place, but there we are. [08:50] LA: Were you, as my Dad would put it, strutting your stuff? KH: [laughs] [08:58] JZ: I mean, in terms of the culture of these places, were they quite rowdy and alcohol-fuelled? KH: They weren’t as alcohol-fuelled as the press would’ve had you believe [9:12] but certainly alcohol was available there, they were more hippie than rowdy I think. I think people used to go down there for a quiet smoke more than anything else, they generally never had any major stars there, it was always local groups, players, can’t think of anybody that was actually there when I was there. It was, you know, a bit more low key than others, it was just, as it was an unusual venue it sort of went up at the headlines rather than because of its actual performers and status. [10:08] JZ: I think I partly asked because I’m reading a book currently about Eel Pie Island in Twickenham. KH: Not Michele? [10:18] JZ: Michele Whitby is a chapter within it. It’s essentially a series of edited… different contributors with a different chapter – I forget what you call those kind of books – but yes, Michele Whitby is a chapter within it. But essentially, within that, they do talk about Eel Pie as being this really wild kind of party atmosphere. KH: Well, that was completely different. But there again, you could have a dozen folk barges, the size of it there. But they had this incredible, sprung dance floor and when everybody was going on that, the thing used to go up two or three feet, it was quite an incredible sensation. [11:10] JZ: So you went to Eel Pie yourself. KH: Oh, yeah. That was almost a residency, there. [11:16] JZ: What period of time would you have been visiting Eel Pie? KH: That would’ve been… sixty to sixty-six, I think. [11:30] JZ: And how regularly would you have ended up there? KH: At least every other week.