I started listening to pop music as a 10-11 year old kid in 1962-63, when my mother got a transistor radio to bring into the garden, with short and long waves. She was not in the garden at night, so there I borrowed the radio. I was looking at the scale especially on the medium-wave-band, and soon found a station in which there was good music at evenings, this was of course 208, Radio Luxembourg, which in the evenings was English spoken.
It was before I had begun English lessons in school, but I soon learned the titles of the songs, at least as I thought they should sound.
My playmate Steen, who was a year older, deciphered the titles for me.
The first music that “struck” me were songs with the Beatles, which were “power-played” on Radio Luxembourg each night. I remember “Love Me Do”, but “I Saw Her Standing There” and “All My Loving” among some songs that I bawled along to, even then.
Steen and I recalled how many Beatles titles we had heard, and wrote lists with them. Every day when we met after school, we compared these lists to see who had the most on them.
In 1964 or thereabouts I got new neighbors, Petersen’s “Hotel Svend Gønges Kro” in Adelgade in Præstø. They had a son who was also a year older than me, but it was perfectly fine, and then he had his own record player, and both singles and LPs by the Beatles. I remember that we often heard “A Hard Day’s Night” both afternoons and evenings, when we played skittles at the old bowling alley, which was in a side-building to the inn.
We often went on our bikes to the old large copper beech at Grundtvigsvej to sit and sing songs from the top of the huge tree where we could gaze out across the city.
In 1965, Steen was confirmed, and now the music began to take off. From his confirmation money, he bought a brand new super Philips reel tape recorder. He also persuaded his parents to get their FM radio and record player into his room, then he and I could record songs from “After school” on tape. It was not just the Beatles that we heard. Jørgen Mylius or Hans Jørgen Skov played a wide range of good pop music every afternoon.
And it was nice to listen to the same tunes from the band without talking between songs.
Steen was that I also really fond of Cliff and the Shadows; probably also influenced by one of our mutual playmates, Klaus Strand-Holm, from Steen’s class. Klaus was extremely fond of Cliff and especially Shadows, which clearly characterizes his band, Klaus & Servants’ music today.
Elvis was not really heard. Back then it was either Cliff or Elvis you were a fan of, not both.
I was not able to play anything other than radio at home, because my parents did not have records or a turntable. They did have a tape recorder though, a large Grundig TK830 with 3D sound.
When Dad was technically clever, and he had installed speakers in each room in the apartment, so there was music all day all over the house. He had even built a FM-tuner from a description from Popular Mechanics, so we could listen to Radio Mercur, and later the Danish Radioprogram P3.
My parents had a photo-shop, and made developed the pictures in the darkroom, so there was a need for music to accompany working hours.
I became a tape recorder in 1966 for my confirmation. As Steen’s this also was a Philips reel tape recorder. I luckily got a turntable that could be connected to the recorder too.
For confirmation, I also got 2-3 singles and a gift certificate for an LP … .. my first LP.
The day after confirmation I bicycled out to “Præstø Radio” in Præstø to see if there was a LP that I wanted. I had listened much to The Who, and ordered their first Lp “My Generation” which became my first LP.
My first single was “Friday On My Mind” with Easy Beats and some Beatles singles soon followed.
The funds were limited, but my afternoon job as errand boy gave me money for buying some records. Mostly singles as LP’s were too expensive (dKr 39.50)
Musically Steens and my style parted a lot, because Steen was more to the softer pop as Cliff and the Shadows, while I quickly got my ears open for the more progressive “beat” as it’s called then.
Now I also had my own tape recorder so I could mix the music as I wanted.
To get new music, I swapped records with my mates. If I were to make up today, how many records had in years from 1966 to 1972, I think that I have had approx. 7-800 LPs. I copied the records to tape, so I still could listen to them.
Durability was not as on the records, and it’s something else to sit with an album cover than a stupid tape box.
When I started a family, I was better to hold on to my records, and after the invention of the CD, I began collecting the old records again, but this time on CD. However, I still do have many of the old LP’s.
As time went, I had an urge to play the music I had listened to in all these years, and I even started to strum the guitar again. 13 Guitars, 4 acoustics and 9 electrics is something I and a some mates are having fun with.
In 2009 I even began writing my own songs, and you can hear these along with some covers here on Reverbnation.
Inspired by The Beatles, I say:
“A Splendid Time Is Guaranteed To All”
Have fun with my songs too…….
Ole
December 2019