I grew up in Tyneside during the fifties and sixties and, like many of my generation, I became restless with the cosy, post-war sentimentality of music on the radio and was transformed by the birth of skiffle and rock'n'roll, picked up on rare tv footage and mainly through Radio Luxembourg and AFN, as well as through jukeboxes and fairground rides.

Our early influences at this time were British based skiffle bands such as Lonnie Donegan, the Vipers and Johnny Duncan, as well as major American artistes like Bill Haley, Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly.

This period in Britain's post-war history is one of the richest, but it was overshadowed by the massive success of the British Beat groups and Swinging London. The success of the reopened Ace Cafe in London (see links) is a sign of increasing interest in this time.

At this time, most Saturdays began with a crowd gathering at J.G.Windows music shop in Newcastle's Central Arcade; with displays of spangly Futurama and Burns guitars, Vox and Watkins amps and the latest 45s on demo. Three or four people would pack into each listening booth, and the staff were happy to keep the tunes coming.

'One red light bulb at the top of the stairs

Frequent visitors included members of the Swinging Blue Jeans, the Mersey Beats, Freda Kelly (the Beatles fan club secretary) and, particularly, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes; a real rock'n'roll outfit that Ringo Starr drummed with before moving over to the Beatles. Rory was a really nice guy, a great performer and in those days he drove a finned Sunbeam Rapier. Offstage, he always seemed to me to be quite nervous and lacking in confidence. Sadly he died later in tragic circumstances. A great loss to rock'n'roll.

The Bo-Weevils gigged around Liverpool and Birkenhead, once coming fourth out of 26 acts in a talent contest held by the comedian Ken Dodd at his club, the Merseyside Artistes Association; so a great showbusiness future loomed, until founder members Gordon and Harry decided to try their luck in the USA! I tried to get Lynn and myself jobs on a Cunard liner with the idea of joining them, but the interviewer at Cunard gently pointed out to me that the general idea was for their staff to travel to America and back again repeatedly as a career, not to jump ship on their first trip....

Lights are an army, marching east to west

Vince was temporarily based in Tyneside, and he started touring the area in a full black leather stage outfit with me at the wheel of an ex - Civil Defence ambulance that I used for gigs. One night in Ashington, a mining town in Northumberland, Vince leaped off the stage towards a terrified audience who were more used to reflective hippy bands. Instead of mobbing him, as he expected, these timid folk shrank away, leaving him alone on the dance floor.

Eventually, I took the van back to Vince's flat in Newcastle, only to find him relaxing with a cup of tea, watching television. He said he'd been embarrassed by the audience, so he'd left the club, walked to the bus station in the centre of town and caught a bus back home, where he put the kettle on and settled down with the tv.

The lure of rock'n'roll was beginning to affect me in other ways. I bought a 1959 AMI Lyric juke box that had spent its early years in a Northumberland pub, and stocked it with fifties and early sixties singles. Whilst looking for them in a Gateshead second hand shop I found a hand-written notice announcing a meeting of rock'n'roll enthusiasts. At this, I met Rockin' Jim Newark, Tongue Tied Pete and Johnny Murray, all founder members of what became the North East Rock'n'Roll Society.

Within a few weeks, the group had outgrown the pub, moving to the fabulous Alletsa Ballroom in the coastal town of Whitley Bay, where teddy boys seemed to emerge from the woodwork to pack the dance floor. 'Junior Teds' (usually the children or younger brothers of O.T.s, or Original Teds) flocked to join in, bringing some of the dance moves of Northern Soul to the mix. In a replay of the fifties, local residents began to complain about noise, rowdyism and drunken behaviour, and the management of the Alletsa asked the group to move on.

We started rehearsing as the Hot Rod Gang there, storing our equipment in a small room off a top floor corridor that was supposed to be haunted. One weekend we were joined by a team of ghost-hunters, who set up monitoring equipment at both ends of the corridor. Nothing happened that time but we had a few spooky moments, usually when one of us went to get some piece of equiment late at night. I once walked out of that room right into someone and we both yelled out - it turned out to be Shakin' Stevens, looking for the bathroom between sets...

At one of the bop sessions, it emerged that another band was forming and the two singers, Chris Magee and I, met to see what common interests we shared. An experienced rock'n'roll pianist, Dave Heslop (who had also worked with Vince Taylor and in another successful band, the Kylastrons) joined us, together with drummer Brian 'Sticks' Dixon.

Within three months of forming, the Hot Rod Gang played Newcastle City Hall as support act to the current number one chart band Prelude. We were the resident band at the Aventine two nights a week, and I still have a gig book showing that we worked 29 dates in one 31 day month that year.

On our way home, the noise from the back of the van was worse than usual, and the old ambulance swayed from side to side whilst the teds lurched about in the back. As we neared DJ Tongue-Tied Pete's home, I pulled up outside a chip shop and we all piled out to take on some rocker fuel.

"R'yeuw lukkin a'me eff'in wife, y'eff'in basta?" came a shout, as a short but solid Glaswegian street warrior hove into view, thrusting his battle-scarred face into the Panther's. But the Pink Panther was a lover, not a fighter. Most of the original teds were up for a scrap at short notice, whereas many of the younger ones, like Mick, were more obsessed with the clothes and the music, and Mick wasn't keen to get his drape bloodied.

"OK look," I said, changing tack, "there's about a dozen of us and we don't want trouble, but..." CRACK-CRACK! My head was twanging with noise as Glaswegian Man's fist connected with my mouth, hurting a lot more than it should have. I went to retaliate, but Tongue-Tied Pete launched himself at G-M, pulling him into a headlock. G-M used his shoulders to swing Pete around, roaring and bellowing as he tried to dislodge his grip, whilst his wife screamed like a banshee.

Back in the van, I nursed my bleeding mouth and throbbing head as we drove to Pete's high-rise flat to get cleaned up. Pete was fired-up about the fight, but I just wanted to get some hot water and antiseptic to my wounds. The police car followed us for a couple of blocks, eventually peeling away in search of richer pickings.

As Ron and I sipped Sheila's sweet tea through stinging swollen lips, the other teds pieced the story together for us. It seemed that, when Glaswegian Man aimed his punch at me, I pulled my head back sharply. Ron had been standing close behind me, and the back of my skull had smashed into his face as I tried to avoid the punch. My mouth rebounded onto G-M's fist, which knocked my head back into Ron's face for a second time. This explained the extra pain, but I'd had no idea in the heat of the action that Ron had been near me at all.

Sadly, a combination of Jim's fading health (he had TB earlier in life, and had a weakened heart) and the demands of the Hot Rod Gang on my time meant that both editors had to quit, but our single issue of the magazine got a good response and sold well to rock'n'roll fans in 23 countries.

On one occasion, a female member of the audience paid special attention to Chris, Sandie's boyfriend, dancing close to him as he sang. Without missing a beat, Sandie drew a drumstick out of the pouch that hung by her snare drum, throwing it past Chris' ear and neatly smacking the offending female on her forehead. Game Over!.

The Sabres had a punishing gig schedule, which spread right across the North of England and led to support acts for the Pirates, The Darts, The Mekons, John Peel and ex-Spiders from Mars drummer Woody Woodmansey's U-Boat. The nature of the times was such that it didn't matter if two or more styles were mixed on the same bill, audiences liked it and the bands got along fine. One time the Sabre Jets played at London's Acklam Hall, a venue built between support struts for the Westway overhead motorway, and almost the entire audience were rastafarians, not your average rock'n'roll fan base, but nevertheless their enthusiam helped to make the gig one of the best nights the band had ever played.

The snow fell harder, the ambulance's rear wheels struggling for grip. As we crested a rise, a faint green glow showed through the blizzard in the valley below. Slithering down the narrow road in low gear, Antoine and I peered through the snow smeared windscreen and saw the glow become a flashing sign, like a beacon across the moors. Drawing nearer, it took on the shape of writing, and eventually we made out the words Hot Sprouts....Hot Sprouts....Hot Sprouts.... piercing the wintry night.

"Ok, people are going to have to get out while we take a run at this hill", said Antoine, and I jumped down from the cab and went around to open the heavy back doors of the ambulance. Angry shouts came from the dark interior, as the icy air disturbed their attempts to sleep off the exhaustion of the night's gig in Liverton Mines. Cursing me, the band slowly extricated themselves from the relative warmth of the ambulance. As their eyes adjusted to the snowy scene outside, Sandie said "Hey, there's a chip shop! Where are we?". The answer was: nowhere, and it's not a chip shop, it's a hot sprout shop.... undeterred by this, Sandie and the rest of the Sabre Jets slithered gratefully across the treacherous road surface and into the cold blue neon of the small building.

Entering the building, we saw what looked like an ordinary English chip shop, with a long counter, no seats and a frying range. Behind the counter were two delighted Chinese, busily making up orders for the rest of the band. On the wall above their heads was the menu, beginning with Hot Sprouts in bold letters, then adding 'also fish, chips, etc'.

Amid noisy goodbyes and wishes of good luck, the band made their way outside and set off up the slippery hill towards the waiting ambulance. As we ate our piping hot chips, sprinkled with sea salt and splashed with vinegar, we began exchanging theories as to why a chip shop would, one: open in the middle of nowhere and stay open after midnight in winter, and two: put up an expensive sign advertising Hot Sprouts and not mention chips, the staple diet of late night British travellers. This debate continued in the cab, as Antoine steered the ambulance through the blizzard towards the distant lights of Teesside.

"....no mate, you wanna put Sprouts on the sign, no-one bothers with chips 'round here, do they Bob....?"

Theory 2:The Rational Explanation:

Theory 3.(cue Robert Stack voiceover)

Theory 4:'It Was All A Dream....'

Blueport used a mixture of street nerve, Mike Maurice's talent for publicity and beginners' luck to get their releases airplayed, and the Sabre Jets Radioland E.P. (BLU-2) was played extensively in the UK and abroad. It was voted into the Time Out top five by a panel of John Peel, DJ Stuart Coleman, Giovanni Dadomo and rock'n'roll historian Charlie Gillet, author of Sound of the City. The Sabres toured in support of the E.P., and excellent reviews came in from France, Germany and the USA.

As so often happens, a heavy gig schedule takes its toll on band members' health and relationships. In 1979, Sandie and Chris left the band, and Eric 'Remo' Schaefer took over on drums. The reformed Sabre Jets MkII started their playing career at London's Nelsons club in Wimbledon, where they were told in the booking letter that Rockin' at the Ace Café was '.... fast becoming a jukebox favourite'.

At this time, the small Blueport label was suffering from cashflow problems as payments from distributors were not coming in fast enough to fund repressings, a common problem with small labels. Despite successes from the Sabre Jets and American Echoes, the label's bank withdrew its support and Blueport was forced to close down. Shortly after this the Sabre Jets, finding ourselves without a label or a record to promote, decided to take a break from gigging.

Ken and I, and our new found friend Joss Elliot (from the famous folk-singing family the Elliotts of Birtley) saw the light, thanked Brian Setzer from the bottom of our hearts and promptly left to form The Firebirds, drawing back Carlos Magee and Sandie LaRocque from the MK1 Sabre Jets to make a kickin' rockabilly four-piece with the sole intention of playing live and going mental.

Joss (by then Joss E. Firebird, naturally) was a fine slap bass player who could not keep still, and the Firebirds had a great run that sadly ended when Sandie became ill (probably from exhaustion) and Joss went off to music college, where he learned riffs no honest man could play.

Ian had recently given up his successful bike racing career, and his parents were looking forward to fewer worries about his safety, so his death and the serious injuries to his fiancee and pillion rider Cherry hit the whole family very hard. The funeral procession of over 70 motorcycles, with outriders speeding ahead to halt traffic at roundabouts, was so moving as to be almost unbearable.

In turn, my sons triggered my interest in early digital composition and multi-tracking, something I regard as the spiritual successor to recording experiments by Les Paul, Mickey Baker and Sylvia Vanderpool, Buddy Holly himself and of course Joe Meek.

In 1987 I formed a duo with my eldest son, Alastair, who could cook up a mean Green Onions on his keyboard, remembering it from his early childhood riding in the back seat of our 1960 Buick Invicta and hearing it on the family's 1959 AMI Lyric jukebox (which was often set to autoplay and turned down low to play the children to sleep at night). This duo became The Kindness of Strangers, borrowing our name from the Tennessee Williams line in A Streetcar Named Desire. We secured a weekly residency at an upmarket wine bar, Trotters, and got a good feeling out of playing subversive tunes to the Porsche and Sushi punters that populated the tables. Naturally, full dress leather jackets were worn in such company.

Sabre Jets' bassist Mad Dog Lupé and sax and percussionist Antoine Legris returned from semi-retirement to join the K.O.S., and they were joined by vocalist Irene Sutherland (ex-Catstycam) and drummer Lloyd Howell (ex-East Side Torpedoes) to form the full band version of The Kindness of Strangers, who gigged frequently and recorded an as-yet unreleased album of the same name, featuring some new compositions (including an instrumental written by Alastair) some joint compositions from Alastair and I and one from Irene and Alastair.

This work was always full of tension, and one way of releasing this was for me and my wife Lynn (formerly Lynn Cawood, vocalist with the Bo-Weevils in Liverpool) to sing rock'n'roll and rockabilly at home with an acoustic guitar. Read Peter Guralnik's fabulous book on Elvis' early years, Last Train to Memphis, and you'll see why. Try it some time!

Out of these rehearsals came the duo MG & Lynnette and we developed our versions of stripped-down rock'n'roll, rockabilly and country songs into a show called The Acoustic Roots of Rock'n'Roll. Rockin' Ron Lewis, former Hot Rod Gang bass player, helped the duo to record their entire repertoire live to one-take digital two-track, with no overdubs. We plan to release some of this material on CD one day.

'The Acoustic Roots of Rock'n'Roll' show played care homes, outdoor concerts and a high security prison, where for 13 years between 1978 and 1991 I ran a music and songwriting project.

After a Christmas gig at one residential care home, the Lynnette & I were told that a very old lady had died while we were singing 'Sea Cruise'. "Don't worry," said the home's manager, "she had been enjoying herself in the first half...." Lynnette and I were slightly reassured to hear that, but from then on we thought twice about using the phrase 'A Killer Set....' And certainly, there are many worse ways to leave this world than by fading out at the end of a long life to the sound of 'Sea Cruise'.

Another aspect of these gigs that Lynnette and I didn't anticipate was that staff and relatives would come along, making the shows straddle a wide age range. Sometimes, we'd play a second 'hard core rockabilly' set for the staff and families, after the older people had gone off to bed.

The 'strange man' turned out to be Chris Woodford, who was working with ex-Hot Rod Gang pianist Dave Heslop and well-known rock'n'roll DJ Stew Campbell to organise a 25th Anniversary reunion of the North East Rock'n'Roll Society, to be DJ'd by Stew himself and the legendary Tongue Tied Pete.

The show was to feature many bands and acts that had played for the Society in the 1970s, especially their resident bands The Hot Rod Gang and Vince St. John and Red River Rock (see the picture gallery for the full programme). Both the Hot Rod Gang and the Sabre Jets played to a rockin' audience of many familiar (but 25 years older) faces, including Johnny Murray, Sheila Forrester and the one and only 'Pink Panther', Mick Rankin!

In early 1998, another reunion occurred following the death of Carl Perkins, when the same team organised a tribute concert in Gateshead, England. This time the Hot Rod Gang played, together with the well-known international rockabilly act The Sureshots. This second show was truly unique, as it brought Speedo (rhythm guitar) Dave Heslop (piano) and Rockin' Ron Lewis (bass guitar) together on the same stage as Carlos Magee, Sandie LaRocque and I for the first time since 1975. And the Hot Rod Gang's driving version of 'Jeannie Jeannie Jeannie' said it all!

We tried to e-mail our congratulations for the project, but the system wasn't configured right and the e-mail wasn't delivered.

Rockers, Go there! There is no other place to be. Mark and his team have struck the perfect balance between nostalgia and relevance; this is a working café that also sells bike clothing and accessories to the original patterns, by the original British manufacturers. It is also a motorcycle club with members world-wide, and Mark and Linda are developing the music connections the Ace has always had.

I've also been working with the former Sabre Jets sax-and-percussion man Antoine Legris, my son Alastair and photographer and lighting man Ken Cameron on a secret piece of rocker-related business, Project-'X', which we hope will set the record straight about the quality of our country's music before the more well-known British Beat Boom of the 1960s. Watch this space for more information!