We now had a Hofner President, Garth’s Barnes & Mullins ‘Madrigal’ 8 watt amp, a Hofner Triumph with pick-up, a Watkins Westminster 14 watt amp, a ‘Fenton-Weill’ copy bass with stuck-on pick-up and 15” bass speaker in a home-made plywood cabinet and Dave Houghton’s drums. Despite their low wattage, those old valve amps were loud enough to be heard all the way down Windfield Road - kids were soon banging on the fence and lobbing bricks on the roof of Garth’s shed at the din we were making. The Troubadors were go! (I wanted ‘the Wild Ones’, but ‘The Two Studious Ones, The Bored One and The Very Nervous Drummer’ would have been more accurate.) 

We’d now rehearsed over a dozen songs - Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, the same numbers every other group played. In the days of the Mersey Sound, respect and credibility came from playing covers better than anyone else. No group played Chuck Berry’s ‘Memphis, Tennessee’ like the soon-to-be-famous Beatles (‘Love Me Do’ was released in October 1962) with John Lennon on vocals and lead guitar, or Larry Williams’ ‘Slow Down’ like Mickey Hart’s Roadrunners. These were the standards to aim at. Few groups played original songs or were expected to. That was for “southern poofter groups with their fancy Fenders, like Riff Clitchard and his Driftin’ Shadows” as someone later wrote*. Liverpool was Gibson and Gretsch country, Hofner and Burns if you couldn’t afford better. Fenders were always unfashionable, even when they became available. 

As the snow melted after that terrible winter of 1962/63, we got our first booking - Banks Road Methodist Church Hall, Garston. Pay? 14 shillings (72p)! Garth sweet-talked his parents and got a cherry-red Hofner V3 solid. This new model, a ‘Strat’ copy with 3 pick-ups and tremolo arm, cost £40 and was as good as a Burns or a Futurama. We taped a microphone to a yardbrush, stood our amps on chairs and nervously faced our first audience. A mate of Dave Houghton’s, Stan Blackmore, joined us on vocals. We opened up with “Some Other Guy”.

I’d started writing songs. They were so bad, I was too embarrassed to sing them - just as well we were expected to play covers. My song, “Agitator Rock”, was named after the handle on my mother’s gas-boiler washing machine and the less said about “Angel With Silvery Wings” the better.

So no original material for the anything but wild, Wild Ones. Garth had Link Wray’s “Rumble” with B side “The Swag” so we learnt both. They were simple 12-bars, with the E, A & B7 chords Garth had taught me. We did Carl Perkins covers - “Honey Don’t”, “Matchbox”, “Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby”, Chuck Berry classics “Memphis” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”, Leiber & Stoller’s “Some Other Guy” and “Hog For You Babe” and Holly classics “Peggy Sue”, “Rave On” and “Maybe Baby”. That Easter 1963, we also included chart numbers like The Rooftop Singers’ “Walk Right In”, The Chucks “Zippadeedoodah” and the Hollywood Argyles’ “Alley Oop”. Our show-stopper was “Hully Gully”, improvised with lyrics like “Kelloggs! Kelloggs Corn Flakes!” We fluffed chord changes and lost the beat a few times, but the Methodists asked us back.

The Houghtons bought a coffee-bar in Rose Lane, so the Troubadors played there. We played Banks Road Methodist several times and St Mary’s, Grassendale. But practicing and playing in a group had seriously derailed my schoolwork. Studying Architecture at The College of Building (not too far from The Cavern at lunchtimes) was my route out of the working-class streets of South Liverpool, not wasting hard-won opportunities in a silly guitar group. 

Especially one that needed better equipment - Robbo’s bass amp was temperamental and my Triumph was strictly a rhythm guitar. The Wild Troubadors were going nowhere that summer of 1963 when Garth was approached by the Satanists, who had work and some great gear. While I dreamed of a Burns like Searcher Mike Pender’s, Garth’s new group had a spare Vox AC30 to put his V3 through. We suggested he take the offer. 

Garth left as we landed a booking at Liverpool Rugby Club on Aigburth Road for the opening of their new clubhouse, then behind the old Mayfair cinema. We settled our Troubadors/Wild Ones dispute by calling ourselves “the Sinclairs” (emphasis on the ‘Sin!’), with me attempting lead/rhythm like Tony Hicks of The Hollies, except he had a Gibson 335/Vox AC30 combo and a million times my ability. School pal Brian ‘Taffy’ Evans came along for moral support and ended up sharing vocals with us. We had two mikes and my Hofner Triumph all going through my Watkins Westminster. Without Garth we soon ran out of material, but as “Hully Gully” ground to a halt, Taffy suddenly screamed out “Mashed Potato yeah!” and we were off again. The rugby crowd plyed us with beer all night, the line of empty pint mugs growing ever longer behind Dave Houghton’s drums.

But the Sinclairs were short-lived. Dave Houghton wanted to join the Police and Robbo, out of his jewelry apprenticeship, had a design job at Wedgewood in Stoke. Taffy, however, was hooked. His classmate Jimmy Ikonomides had a red Futurama and an amp made from bits bought from the The Hi-Hat in Dale Street (30 watt amp, 12” Goodman’s speaker). Jimmy’s cousin Harry Williams (relative of club manager Allan Williams) was a drummer with a Framus bass and ‘piggy-back’ bass amp. Harry would drum for now, Taffy could borrow his bass, did I want in? Taffy loved being upfront with me, harmonized well with my vocals and wanted to play bass and learn ‘harp’. So we became the Knights - it was painted on Harry’s bass drum.

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