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Introduction

Why are you reading this introduction? I never do! If I’ve bought a book about somebody I like I wanna get straight into the story to find out what sort of things he got up to and what makes him tick.

But perhaps you ain’t bought it yet and you’re reading this bit in the shop in hopes it’ll give you an idea of what it’s all about and if it’s worth spending your money on? I’ll tell ya one thing. It’s got a few swearwords in it. But you see, that’s the way I talk. I use ’em like perfect punctuation. You don’t notice them. But you would if they weren’t there. The same as if you had no full stops or commas, the words would be there but the flow and rhythm would be lost. Now I might slip up on me full stops and commas here and there, but I do know where to put a swearword.

So what’s it about then? Well, for starters, it’s about my life up until I got together with Dave. The school days. The early Rock ’n’ Roll days. The fifties. London street life. The serious bits. The funny bits. The days spent on the road with mad but likeable blokes like Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis. The laughing and learning. The Soul Scene in the sixties with Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers. Touring with The Beatles. The daft but exciting American tours in the seventies with Heads Hands & Feet. The skint and the rich times. The hit records and the flops. The wonderful and the wallies. In short, the bits you look back on as all part of growing up. And then there’s meeting Dave…And that’s where a whole new set of stories start!

I hope you do enjoy this book ’cos one day, when I am grown up, I might write another one.

Well I did actually.

The second half of this book was written a quarter of a century later after the first. Have I grown up? Don’t know. But I enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it. The main course, the Chas & Dave story, rambles from the ‘Gertcha!’ days to the Glastonbury days and everything in between. With Rock ’n’ Rollers, royalty, and punks to politicians, all agreeing in principle that Rockney Rules. All in favour say, ‘Gertcha!’