Our electric guitars about 1963
Clive Leyland, me and Michael Brockbank
Click picture to enlarge
My father probably took the photo (don't know where).
This was just before The Beatles I think, and before Pete Turbefield on bass guitar and 'Mo' Worsley on drums. To lads of our age, electric guitars were like magic in them days. Clive Leyland's was not quite a Fender Stratocaster like Hank Marvin's but it looked like one and he also had a Vox AC30 amplifier like Hank did – which again was something. No doubt we were playing Apache or FBI – or Atlantis (Clive had everything we needed, including a Watkins Copicat echo machine).
This page about Clive tells the story. I don't know what happened to Michael Brockbank but he never joined up. Michael's parents were Alan and Dorothy Brockbank. Dorothy was Irish and helped my grandmother out at home and became a family friend. Her husband Alan owned Brockbank's garage, now just a filling station opposite a pub called The Castle (at the Junction of Tonge Moor Road and Crompton Way in Bolton) owned at the time by the celebrated Bolton Wanderers centre forward Nat Lofthouse and whose son Geoff went to my school.
Alan Brockbank was a devout Christian Scientist. He died after refusing medical treatment for some kind of condition that would not have been fatal if treated. I stayed over sometimes with Michael at Dorothy's house next to Turton Tower. I think he was a year older than me. I soon lost touch with him anyway. Dorothy Brockbank was a very kind lady indeed. I am not sure she was treated too well by Michael in her later years but that is just hearsay (Michael can correct me perhaps if he is still alive).
Next door to the Brockbanks in Turton lived the Poole family. I went there too when I was about thirteen because Alan, the son, went to the same school as me so I knew him. Occasionally he would produce a German Mauser pistol from WW2 which his father had and wasn't particularly careful with because Alan demonstrated it to me by firing real bullets at trees. I don't recall his parents but his older sister was very attractive and always upstairs.
Aged about 12 or 13 I was travelling all over the place on the bus. I don't remember a single pupil at Bolton School travelling there in his own car. Now it's normal and the big bike shed is probably gone. By the way, Bolton School Boys' had its own electric guitar 'pop group' called the DB4. My electric guitar in the photo was an Antoria. Hank Marvin played one before Cliff Richard bought him his more famous Fender Stratocaster. My second electric guitar was a much better Watkins Colorama I bought off Paul Shaw, the rhythm guitarist in The Invictors, also from Bolton. I later regretted selling it cheap to Andrew Duckworth (Julie Duckworth's eldest brother, now deceased). Michael Brockbank is the person who first introduced me to Cliff Richard by playing "Cliff's I Love You" on his record player. Did Hank Marvin and Nat Lofthouse ever meet each other?
