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About Bob Woodhead – Pop Historian, Presenter & Producer
BOB WOODHEAD – MY LIFE OF POP MUSIC
(Please click on the images to see the full-sized photographs)
This is a completely free service and I make no money from the site.
Some of you may wish to know a little more about me, so here goes…..
The Boring Bit.
I was born in 1955 in Aldwick, which was then a village separated from Bognor Regis by a couple of fields and some farmland. Sadly, it has now become an urban sprawl. My parents, Edwin and Jean owned Willowhale Nurseries, which over the years, also included a Garden Centre and a Landscape Gardening service. The business employed 30 staff during the 1960s boom when a lot of new houses needed gardens. Clients included the great Eric Coates who wrote some beautiful classical music in the first half of the 20th Century, including “The Dambusters March”. My father created the original gardens and landscape at the Bognor Regis Butlins Holiday Camp, which opened in 1960. For about 5 years this meant that we had completely free admission to the Camp. I was exposed to a lot of music on the jukeboxes and fairground-rides.
At home we had a huge, long rectangular plug-in valve radio on which I listened to “Children’s Favourites” presented by Uncle Mac. This was replaced by a television in 1959, and a portable Ferguson transistor radio, which was kept in the kitchen but moved around all over the house and garden. This gave me massive exposure to so many different genres of popular music which were featured on the BBC Light Programme.
In the freezing winter of 1963 (when the temperature never rose above zero degrees from Boxing Day 1962 until well into March 1963), we had our kitchen and other rooms re-decorated, so I had the radio in my bedroom for several weeks, and listened to Radio Luxembourg for a couple of hours before sleep. It just happened to be the time that “Please Please Me” by The Beatles was No.1 on 3 of the 4 charts (but not the one we rely on today). I was so taken with the “come on, come on” crescendo repeated four times, and with the energy of the record, which was so different to anything else I’d ever heard. “Love Me Do” had passed me by because it only made No.17 in the charts, and I never heard it played on the radio.
We had bought our first Record-Player, a Ferranti, in 1961, so I was acquiring a growing record collection. The habit of a lifetime had started! My parents and older sister Caroline also built up a collection, and Caroline’s best friend would bring the LP “Please Please Me” to play at our house. Caroline herself bought “With The Beatles”, and these are still my two favourite Beatles’ albums. As the 1960s wore on, I gained a lot of knowledge from Caroline’s collection, because she liked music that I didn’t like, such as Bob Dylan and Georgie Fame, to name but two. I had an inquisitive mind, so would always listen to the B-sides of all the records, plus all the tracks on EPs and LPs, looking out for the names of the songwriters, producers, etc.
Before we had the Record-Player, I would go to my grandparents in Bognor, to listen to their entire collection of 78 r.p.m. records on a Wind-Up Gramophone-Player that used steel-needles and the “tinny” sound coming out of the arm. On a wet day at the age of about 4 or 5, I played both sides of every single record in their collection which dated back to the 1920s and 30s….a DJ was born!
From 1964, hearing the latest pop music became much easier, with the advent of the offshore, pirate radio-stations….Caroline, London, City, England, etc. My father’s Wolseley had a brand-new, push-button radio, and one of the buttons had been set by the garage to tune to Radio Caroline. The signal was better than it was in the house, and I remember sitting in the hot car listening to Tony Blackburn’s “Big Line-Up” the week the school summer-holidays started in July 1964. It was not until recently that I realised that Tony made his first broadcasts that very week!
The Less-Boring Bit In The Middle
It was not until the Late-1970s, when I was in my early-twenties, that I realised that it only seemed to be me that could remember the time of year that all the songs had been hits, and their time spent at No.1 and approximate chart-position. People told me that I had an exceptional Oral memory (a memory for sounds). Of course, I soon learnt that dotted around the country there are others who can do this, but not in great numbers. I had always thought that everyone could remember the things that I could.
Unfortunately, I had already done my 3 “A” Levels in Law, Politics and Economics at Chichester College, and graduated with a Second Class Honours degree in Law from Reading University, when I soon realised that I was not interested in practicing Law. I found it a huge bore. I had done these subjects because they suited my ability to remember facts. My sister Caroline told me that I was the only person she knew that had been through University without reading a single book! (Ironically, nowadays I enjoy reading a lot). My method of learning was to make sure that I attended virtually 100% of the Lectures, make good notes, and then record those notes on to cassette-tape. I played back the tapes continuously during the three-weeks before exams, and when doing the exams it felt as though I had a picture of all the lecture-notes in my head. I could even remember a few of the things that happened during the particular lecture like humorous moments and some of the discussions.
Because I’m a fairly quiet person, a career in radio had never occurred to me, and I never wanted to work in London, which was a huge obstacle. Hence, my working-life was really about paying for a roof over my head and food on the table, with the musical side of things, relegated to my spare time. Most of my working life was spent with two organisations.
With my parents, Edwin & Jean, and my sister Caroline, enjoying a 1959 vintage Red !!
At Chichester District Council I was employed by the trade-union Nalgo as their Administrator, then later by the Council itself in the Legal Department. In more recent years I was with HMRC, who despite what some people think, is a very good employer. Thankfully, I transferred all my earlier pensions into the Civil-Service scheme, which helped me to take early retirement in 2014. I gradually moved westwards, firstly to Chichester, then to Waterlooville, Portsmouth, and since 2004, the lovely Purbrook.
I lived with music-teacher Sylvia through most of the 1980s, married and lived with Sue through the 1990s, and after a few fleeting romances, I was lucky enough to meet my partner and the love of my life Krystyna, in 2012. She is totally different to anyone I’ve ever met…the sweetest woman who ever lived. Krystyna is from the east of Poland, and she moved to England in 2006, settling first in Manchester.
The Interesting ? Bit At The End.
My life in music began in 1982 when I began writing monthly Record Review columns for free newspapers like “The Citizen” in Chichester and “The Journal & Guardian” in Bognor. My big break came in January 1985, when Graham Brooks, editor of “The Southdown Observer” series of newspapers signed me up as a freelance to write the weekly “Record Review” in the Chichester, Bognor Regis, and the Midhurst & Petworth Observer newspapers. In the early-1990s Graham retired, and all the various columnists gradually disappeared. I started to just review the music I loved (mostly soul and technopop), and I wish I’d featured a more cosmopolitan range of CDs.
Record-Companies go to any length to promote their product !!
In 1993 I became involved with Radio Bognor, which developed into South West Sussex Radio, and finally Spirit FM. I presented a lot of shows on two of the trial broadcasts (1-month RSLs – Restricted Service Licences). I became a Committee and Board member as Head Of Music, as well as a shareholder, and ended up writing the Music-Policy section of the successful application for a permanent licence, won by Spirit FM. However, the experience ended in disappointment for all the volunteers who had run the South West Sussex Radio broadcasts, apart from just one DJ who was given a salaried Presenter job, and a couple of guys who worked behind the scenes on engineering and technical aspects. They did give me a 2-hour (unpaid) show on the “graveyard” Sunday evening slot, which only lasted a month, because they didn’t want me to go into any detail about the records I was playing. They said it distracted listeners from the adverts, promotions and events that the station was plugging.
As far as I was concerned they didn’t like too much “personality” going into the shows. The overall “sound” of the station was all that seemed to matter. As it turned out, the four shows that I put together and presented were the worst I have ever done, because the criticism and lack of constructive help destroyed my confidence. I was a bag of nerves! Some time later I discovered that not engaging volunteers once a permanent radio licence is awarded, is fairly common practice across the local radio industry in the UK, and I met people who had suffered the same fate!
Amazingly it was only about a month later in that summer of 1996 that a 1950s Radio Station heard about me, and invited me to work on their very first 1-month trial broadcast (RSL) which was great fun. We broadcast from an empty flat above what used to be “Focus Sounds” in Waterlooville. I also did a couple of shows for the revamped Radio Victory who were broadcasting to Portsmouth on Cable at the time. They offered me the weekend breakfast-show, but this meant starting at 6:00 a.m. on my two days off from the main job. I have never been an early morning person!! However, I was back with the 50s Radio Station again for the Havant Festival broadcast in the spring of 1998, when they broadcast for a week from the station-owner’s house in Havant. A former coal-store beside the kitchen was converted into a Radio studio!
I returned for their February 1999 one-week licence, which was the first time that they seriously targeted the older-audience who were, and still are, badly catered for by radio and television. The policy of playing no music recorded after 1959 was adopted. We broadcast from an empty top-floor flat of one of those huge skyscrapers in Somerstown, Portsmouth….certainly the most inspiring view I’ve ever had whilst on air!
I did another month for them later in 1999, when the shows were recorded in Havant to be broadcast across the Isle-Of-Wight, and another in 2000 when we broadcast to Portsmouth again. However, despite being asked, I could not join them when the station began broadcasting permanently on 101.1 FM in Spring 2002, because I was doing a weekly 9:00 Monday evening slot for BBC Local Radio. “Doctor Rock’s Rock & Pop Hour” which I co-presented, was broadcast across the entire BBC South and South-East Region, simultaneously on BBC Radio Solent, BBC Southern Counties (Sussex & Surrey), BBC Radio Kent, BBC Radio Berkshire and BBC Radio Oxford, covering nine counties in total, so I guess that this is what I am best-known for. The quarterly audience research figures indicated an audience averaging 55,000 listeners for the 21:00 to 22:00 hour on Monday evenings. I “saw-off” 15 different co-presenters (admittedly some were just stand-ins) during my five-plus years of doing the show. The BBC had “head-hunted” me.
For the first few months I was reviewing new releases, but for the remainder of the time I played Retro-Pop looking at hits and obscurities, plus vintage-charts from this day in history, with a new song or two, or a new album thrown in for good measure. Dominic Busby was my partner-in-crime for three of the five years, and we had a bit of a tempestuous relationship with a lot of “wind-ups” that sometimes went a bit too far. But life is a funny business and we are actually great friends. He is the only one from the BBC to have kept in regular contact. I also had a great time doing the shows with Geoff Allen, Richard Cartridge, Paul Miller, and the beautiful Justine Gale to name just a few. One of the great privileges of working in radio and also writing for newspapers is that you receive a lot of invitations to concerts, and get to meet some of the performers as well. It was certainly a wonderful period of great concerts.
Presenting my “Dr.Rock” Pop
Hour on the BBC South & S.E.
Local Radio Network, 2001.
With Geoff Allen & Paul Miller My favourite BBC co-presenter
(seated), BBC South, Xmas 2001. Justine Gale.
After I had done the show for 5 years, the “Evening Show” management moved to Tunbridge Wells. The main presenter Sue Dougan was based there, so I had to co-present from a booth in the BBC Southampton studio that was barely any bigger than a telephone kiosk or Dr.Who’s Tardis from the outside! It was awful, and the lack of visual contact made humour and empathy almost impossible. Furthermore, I had to record all the tracks of music that I was going to feature on to a Minidisc that I had to send to Kent a week in advance, and after about 6 shows they wouldn’t provide me with any more fresh discs! I also had the laborious task of filling-in Logging sheets with endless details about every track I played (songwriters, publishers, label info, timings, etc), so my workload doubled!
I started to have a lot of Monday evenings off, and the Kent management naturally got fed-up. They wanted to rest me, and just call me up for more occasional shows, but I had endured quite enough by then. With elderly, ailing parents to visit regularly I gave the broadcasting a break, apart from a few occasional guest slots here and there.
This break also gave me more time to enjoy my other passions in life, particularly following Hampshire and England Cricket, which fortunately both enjoyed a great period of success during my “silence”! I really enjoy history, reading, photography, 4K Blu-ray and lots of “gadgetry”. I have also had the opportunity to develop a love of classical music, and a good working knowledge of the subject. I constantly marvel at being able to play music from an i-Phone and i-Pad wirelessly and with Bluetooth through a B&O speaker! It sounds better than my old hi-fi system! The best radio station I ever heard was PrimeTime Radio, but Saga pulled the plug in 2006. However the new Boom Radio opened in 2021 and does the same great job that PrimeTime did, so I often have it on.
I re-joined 1950s Radio in January 2011. This was great timing because the station was just beginning to broadcast on Digital DAB, in addition to its FM and Internet services. It covered the whole of Hampshire, the Isle-Of-Wight, and West Sussex, from BognorRegis to Christchurch along the South Coast.
With Hampshire & Aussie Photo in “The News” for my
Cricket hero Shane Warne. launch of the 50s Chart Show.
Our new Garden Cabin. My partner Krystyna in our garden. Starting back on air 2011.
I think it was one of those things that was just meant to be, because in 2009 I discovered that there were massive amounts of 1950s music available to buy cheaply because they were more than 50-years old and therefore out of copyright. So I decided to collect every single hit record of that decade (1,108 of them) to fill in the gaps in my musical knowledge from that period. It was then that my idea of a comprehensive “1950s Chart Show” came into my head. How lucky for me that the only station playing this music was just 4 miles down the road from my home in Purbrook. And it was a station that I played a small part in launching back in August 1996 with my Sunday Morning Vintage Chart Show. So what a wonderful opportunity to return. I put together and presented my 1950s Chart Show in 2011 which was repeated for 4 years.
Am hoping that in the future I will have the time to provide you with my favourite era of 1960 to 1963 on a four-week cycle of Charts either on this site or a radio station. In 1960 the chart was extended from a Top 30 to a Top 50, so there is a wealth of great music to choose from. I believe that the 1960 to 1963 period was the greatest time for music because of the incredible diversity of genres. Sound quality on recordings had improved greatly with the demise of 78 r.p.m. discs and greater use of stereo. The singers and musicians of the 1950s had perfected their art, and exciting new trends were emerging, most notably the beat boom, led by The Beatles with their amazing energy and songwriting. I still think that John Lennon’s vocal performance on “Anna Go To Him” (from the “Please Please Me” LP) was his greatest. His voice sounded so emotionally tortured on this cover-version of the Arthur Alexander soul classic. As for The Shadows, their musicianship and the sound they created, was faultless.
Am now the owner of a Yamaha Montage-8 synthesiser keyboard, a Limited First Edition of the ROLI Seaboard Grand, plus 2 guitars and a drum-machine, and have created a home music-studio to create some music of my own. Pop songwriting is very difficult now, because most of the combinations of notes and chords have been used up, but I’m very interested in creating “Soundscapes” and other longer music structures, in addition to songs about my observations through life.
Anyway, for now I hope very much that you may enjoy at least some of the music in my Podcasts and Columns, and maybe learn a little about pop history. If so, please save this website to your Desktop or Favourites.
Thank you for reading, and hope you will enjoy the website, the Podcasts and the Pop Columns. Eventually I hope to post my own photographs of many of the great performers that I’ve been lucky enough to meet.
My Best Wishes,
Bob
Krystyna & I with Lisa Stansfield.
We met Burt Bacharach, the
3rd most successful song-
writer in history
A Birthday Celebration.
A Musical Motor or Two !
With 80s Soul Queen, Jaki Graham.
