It was fifty years ago today, Sergeant Pepper learned the band to play...
Well not quite, it wasn't 50 years ago today, and it wasn't Sergeant Pepper either. No it was over 50 years ago that St Cecilia became the only band from Corby to have a hit record in the country's Top Twenty Best Selling Records when it entered the charts in June 1971.
St Cecilia began life in the inauspicious surroundings of the Corby Boys School where auditions had been arranged following the demise of The Rhubarb Tree.
Guitarist John Proctor: “Bip Wetherell, Ricky Moss and Keith Hancock were the instigators. Initially the band was a seven-piece with Norrie McMullen on baritone sax and a guy called Rab McLintock, Steve Holmes from Kettering on drums, Keith Hancock on bass and Les Smith on vocals. After several weeks of rehearsal, we had our first outing at Stamford YMCA where we were paid the princely sum of £15. Bip soon decided he wanted to play more jazzy type material and left to form the jazz/rock fusion band Granite. Norrie and Rab McLintock soon followed Bip through the exit door, whilst Steve Holmes concluded that he preferred ‘an ordinary life’ and wanted to work in a factory! Graham Smith, the drummer with Natural Gas, came in and finally that was the official line-up that would gain chart success and notoriety!”
The song that catapulted the boys to fame was the inspiration and genius of Keith Hancock. With admiral modesty he told the story behind the composition of Leap Up and Down and how it changed their lives during an interview for Alive In the Dead of Night published in 2008. "I was watching the Keith Richards documentary recently and something he came out with resonated with me. How true I thought to myself. The co-writer of a hundred Rolling Stone hits with Mick Jagger expressed his opinion that 'the songs are all up there, pointing to the sky, up in the stratosphere just waiting to be plucked out. You just have to be ready for it!' Such a moment came when I was on holiday with Les Smith in Norfolk."
"We met some French girls and the phrase ‘Leap up and down, wave your knickers in the air’ came into my head (maybe I was being optimistic!) For some reason it must have lingered in the back of my mind. A week later, back at work in the Plug Mill office, I phoned Ricky Moss (who was clerking in the Blast Furnaces office on the other side of the Works) and I said to him: ‘This morning I’m going to write a song that will be a hit record - it’s called Leap Up And Down!’ Ricky laughed at me, but, nevertheless, a couple of hours later I phoned to tell him that the song was ready. It was a few days before the rest of the band got to hear it, and then we started featuring it in our stage act. It got such a good reception from the fans that we quickly decided to make a demo of it at Derek Tompkins’ Beck Studio, in Wellingborough.”
The recording session went very smoothly and resulted in St Cecilia exiting the studio with a product that they felt certain would be snapped up by some enterprising record company. It had a great bass line. The next step was to send the demo to various record companies - however, because of its lyrical content, they all seemed reluctant to take it on.
John Proctor: "Jonathan King heard the song and, recognising the potential appeal of its humour, decided that he could make it into a hit record. He subsequently arranged a recording session for us at the Marquee Martin Studios, in London’s Wardour Street, where we re-recorded our song. Surprisingly, King informed us that he didn’t care for the bass line. Although Keith Hancock didn’t agree with him - he changed it all the same. It changed the sound altogether. Jonathan King secured a deal for us with Polydor Records and three weeks later we were summoned to their offices to hear the finished product. We were distraught. It sounded awful when compared to the original demo.”
For all their misgivings St Cecilia received a boost when Peter Jones reviewed Leap Up And Down in his ‘New Singles’ page in the Record Mirror. ‘This is blatantly commercial and could easily make it. Pretty straightforward stuff, at a breakneck tempo, and the frequent use of the word ‘knickers’ is no hardship. Could click.’
John Proctor: “Unfortunately, it labelled us as a sort of dirty picture postcard band. Although Polydor released the record in April 1971, it was a struggle to get airtime on the radio. The lyrics appear tame now - but back then they caused us a problem”.
Jonathan King promoted the record relentlessly. "When I first heard the song it made me sit up - so I guessed it would have the same effect on others. It was ghastly, but different.’
King’s views were not shared by the BBC. DJ Tony Blackburn refused to play a song about knickers on his Radio One show. Thanks to Tony the band were denied the opportunity to make an appearance on the major pop show of the time, Top of the Pops. It therefore came as a surprise when Jimmy Young decided to give it a spin and thanks to JY the song eventually entered the charts on June 19th of that year.
Keith Hancock and Ricky Moss, encouraged by the success of 'knickers' got down to writing more songs whilst on the road and went back to Beck Studios on several occasions to record demos. Keith: “I had a couple of songs - another saucy number called The Village Bicycle. Ricky had a novelty number called He’s A Collector and John had written a skiffle-style song called Don’t Want Women, Don’t Want Wine.
We decided that John’s number would make an ideal choice for the lucrative Christmas market and we recorded at Polydor Studios - complete with clinking glasses and a singalong party atmosphere. Ricky’s song He’s A Collector was chosen as the ‘B’ side and was recorded at Beck Studios in Wellingborough. A release date was tentatively set for mid-November but, unfortunately, Polydor had other priorities and our ‘Christmas single’ was delayed until January 21st! ‘Wine’ made the ‘breakers’ on the week of release. The NME reported: ‘With all due respect, many people were attracted to their recent hit by the ‘forbidden fruit’ aspect of its lyric. Auntie BBC shouldn’t have anything to frown about with this new one. It is however, a tremendously happy affair which looks set for healthy sales.’
Sadly, in spite of the encouraging exposure in the music press, ‘Wine’ evaporated as soon as it hit the air waves.
John: “Ricky and I were still writing and decided that the next single needed to be another controversial one. We came up with a ditty which we felt could be an anthem for the fast-growing women’s liberation movement. The song was called C’Mon Ma, Burn Your Bra! and, as John Peel pointed out when he reviewed the disc in the music press, it established us as an ‘underwear’ group rather than an underground group!”
Valentine’s Day 1972 saw St Cecilia back in town after a year of touring on the back of the success and notoriety of their debut single. Booking agent Dougie Martell forewarned their fans that this was indeed “a rare appearance on home territory, the only chance Corby people will have of seeing their heroes this year.”
Keith Hancock; “We travelled the length and breadth of the country on the back of Knickers, playing one-nighters all over the country.”
Controversy followed the band around. During a performance of Leap Up And Down, Wave Your Knickers In the Air at a Hunt Ball in Tiverton, Devon, a woman in the hall did just that - whipped off her pants and waved them in the air. The Daily Mirror dropped everything to report: 'Sporty types roared with approval, but not all were amused. Local councillor Bill Jones complained: “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life! This quite attractive lady of about twenty-four took off her knickers. My wife and I will think twice about going to a Hunt Ball again.”
Dougie Martell promoter and St Cecilia 'roadie' has clear memories of life on the road with the band;
“St Cecilia only received two per cent of the royalties for the records that were written by Keith Hancock and Ricky Moss. Leap Up And Down, with its original full brass section was a great production. Jonathan King decided - in his words, to ‘desimplify it’ - but it sounded crap compared to the original acetate. Because the lyrics were a bit lewd, the BBC refused to give it airplay and, in a roundabout way, gave the band all the publicity it required.
The follow up wasn’t as controversial as Leap Up And Down but everybody thought C’Mon Ma was going to be a smash, but despite our optimism, it did nothing to raise a few eyebrows. The band spent a day on a photo shoot in London’s Carnaby Street accompanied by two well-known ladies, brunette Della Mancini and blonde Brandy de Franck, who predictably waved their bras in the air! A copy of C’Mon Ma, Burn Your Bra! was also sent to Germaine Greer, one of the leading protagonists of Women’s Lib.
St Cecilia rode their luck but they were constantly at each others throats. Same old story, get a bunch of lads together, on the road and cooped up in a van for months on end and you're bound to get trouble. It's only human nature, you're bound to get on each other's nerves! Me and fellow 'roadie' Jim Smith were always having to separate various members in punch ups.
With hindsight one problem the band had was that they lacked what you would call stage craft, for want of a better term. They never introduced themselves or hardly talked at all on stage. Me and Jim took it upon ourselves to introduce them. 'Ladies and gentlemen, all the way from Corby, ST CECILIA!!!”
Happy days and great memories.
