Ray, an apprentice joiner, soon told me the wooden pole I’d bought to carve a neck would never take the weight of a tuned-up set of steel guitar strings. I needed a steel ‘truss rod’ underneath the fretboard, running the length of the neck that required a narrow groove cut for the rod to lay in. This was getting technical (and frankly boring), but no truss-rod, and the neck would bend like a bow under the near-ton weight of tuned-up strings. I needed advice from Ray’s old Gilmour schoolmate Garth Hennie. 

Garth played lead guitar in the Flames, with the Edwards brothers, Syd and Eddie, from Grassendale. He had several guitars and his father, a master carpenter on Garston docks, had made him a Hawaiian steel and a double bass. Garth was an apprentice luthier at Rushworth & Draper in town, learning to repair stringed instruments. He was also a Ted, with impressive ‘sidies’ and lived on ‘Hollywood’, the Corporation estate down by the river, where many Garston Teds lived. 

I chickened out, swapped notes with classmates Tony Howard and Derek ‘Del’ Newall, then bought guitar strings, fixed the pole to the maple, bolted tuning pegs to the top of the pole, a steel trapeze tailpiece to the bottom of the body, stretched out the strings and tightened them up. What was concert pitch anyway? The bass strings sounded lower than Duane Eddy at 16rpm. The steel strings pulled the tailpiece out of the maple body and a tuning peg ripped a hole at the top of the neck. In no time the tensioned strings had bent my neck pole beautifully, like a bow - and I hadn’t even calculated or cut the fretwire for the fingerboard I hadn’t bought yet. 

But Ray had news - the Flames had broken up (Syd and Eddie Edwards formed The Nashpool Four, turned pro and went to Hamburg). Garth was looking around. My overdue essay on Emperor Charles V’s 1527 sacking of Rome would have to wait. I was off to Hollywood.

Garth Hennie, guitarist, luthier, record collector and Meccano freak, had a shed that was an Aladdin’s cave of tools and guitars and kit. Despite the ‘sidies’, he was as much a Ted as I was. He had Ted mates because he was teaching them to play guitar. Charley Hughes and Eddie Barlow, all slicked back hair and serious shoes, would come down to the shed with their Hofner Congress and Senator acoustics to learn chord shapes and changes. Garth took one look at my bendy ‘Strat’ and found me an old acoustic, with a broken-off head he’d repaired. I had a proper guitar in my hands at last! Soon I was strumming Roy Orbison’s ‘Dream Baby’ (two chords A and D), Ray jammed in a corner, plonking away on the homemade bass, Garth on his impressive Hofner President, a shiny, chocolate-brown acoustic with single cutaway and Elpico pick-up mounted on a metal rod, so it could be slid from neck to bridge, depending on the sound required.

As Easter 1962 approached, I was improving fast and my schoolwork was down the pan. Garth was into Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Smith, Django Reinhardt and trombonist Bob Brookmeyer. He could tune a guitar too, a feat way beyond me. Now all we needed was a group.

Charley and Eddie weren’t interested and Ray was courting. But neighbour Dave Robinson had a five-stringed banjo. Hearing Garth was making a copy of a Fenton-Weill bass, ‘Robbo’ ditched the banjo and was in. Garth made him a beauty, with a truss rod. The bass was so well made, when Robbo moaned the neck was too thick for his fingers, Garth planed half the wood off the back of the neck and still it didn’t bend. Where’s that beast now?

Another neighbour and friend of Robbo’s, Dave Houghton, seeing our guitars, bought a bass drum, snare and small tom tom off the local Scouts and started saving for cymbals. We had a drummer.

My guitar was a sunburst Hofner Triumph acoustic. Garth wanted to sell it and his Hofner President, to buy a solid with a tremolo arm, but I was broke, my parents not happy with me spending all my time down at Garth’s shed. My schoolwork was so behind now, my mother was called to see Quarry headmaster Bill Pobjoy (the man who got John Lennon into Liverpool College of Art). Buy me an electric guitar when I was about to be thrown out of the school I’d worked so hard to get into? 

But I did have my No 7 Meccano, my reward for passing the ‘11-Plus’, six years earlier. Garth was a Meccano nut, as was his dad. They had every young boy’s dream - a No 10 Meccano in its impressive wooden chest. He’d swap the Triumph for my Meccano and clockwork motor. Charley had a Hofner pick-up and a Watkins Westminster amp for sale at £10. I would stay at school, catch up and take my A Levels, instead of taking a job articled to a quantity surveyor in Castle Street (£12 a month, but I could be down the Cavern every lunchtime!). My mother paid Charley the £10.

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