25 years ago this month the 60s clicked into action, bringing with it a musical revolution. Philip Bashe looks back on how those 60s sounds were made and finds out what those involved are doing now

As Pop music hauls itself into its second decade of existence the question of roles arises. Is the band, in the UK in 1985, still performing the same function as it did 20 years ago? Is a band still the simple song writing/performing unit that it was when the Beatles introduced the world to their imperfect Pop; when the Rolling Stones first reinterpreted Chicago Blues, when Herman's Hermits initially served up their prototypical bubblegum and the Animals belted out their gritty Blues, when the Kinks, Manfred Mann, the Searchers, the Dave Clarke Five, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Nashville Teens and the Honeycombs all staked Pop's claim in this country?

Whilst today's Pop stars bask in the Fairlight limelight and contemplate the storyboard for their forthcoming promo video one can't help but wonder what happened to music making as a trade. Has the glamour-to-graft ratio become unbalanced or are they fulfilling the same roles whilst wearing a touch more make-up and playing Emulators as opposed to Hofner guitars?

Technically, the making of records has become infinitely more intricate but why should people enjoy '80s studio trickery whereas 20 years ago they were content with a good song? Has the songwriting process changed or is it merely the consumer being blinded by packaging and ingenious advertising campaigns?

Have we, in 1985, where the Fab Four are the Fab Five and called Frankie Goes to Hollywood and a Pacemaker is more often than not used to keep Pop's originators alive, forgotten the essence of Pop music?

We spoke to a collection of musicians (some alive and well, some living dead) who were present at Pop's birth and asked them what had changed in the making of records, the presentation of Pop, the gear they used and the way they were...

The whole irony of what became known as the "British Sound," of course, is that it was based principally on American Rock & Roll and Rhythm & Blues.

"We never thought of it as making English music," says Derek Leckenby, guitarist for Herman's Hermits; "we thought we were making American sounds. All of us were influenced by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran and Elvis."

The chord progressions of the Beatles' early music, in fact, were taken largely from Motown, one of several American musics assimilated by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. According to John Stevens of the Berklee College of Music, their first UK hit, I Want to Hold Your Hand, was actually a faulty attempt at evoking a gospel feel.

The group's three-part harmonies, usually in thirds or fourths, also had their roots in black music. The lead vocals, particularly Lennon's, often followed blue notes, or notes that were a half-step off, yielding a dissonant, Bluesy feel. Later recordings, such as Drive My Car (1966), used even closer harmonies, seconds.

A favourite musical device of Lennon and McCartney was ending songs on a G6th chord (eg She Loves You), which presaged Rock & Roll altogether.

"Their producer, George Martin, used to make fun of them for it," says Stevens. "He'd ask them, "Why do you want that old forties' sound? Glenn Miller used to play like that!"

But most of the progressions were quite simple: E, A, B, or C sharp minor, A, B.

"They'd usually use diatonic scales; just the seven basic chords."

And when they would variate, Stevens speculates, as on the bridge to It Won't Be Long from Meet the Beatles, it probably stemmed from a George Martin suggestion. Interestingly, Martin, Parlophone Records' producer and A&R man, had virtually no Pop-production [experience. He] worked mainly on comedy recordings. Yet his guidance was integral in shaping the group's recorded sound, unlike many of the English producers.

"It was very different in those days," says John Burgess, producer of Manfred Mann, Freddie and the Dreamers, and Peter and Gordon, and director of George Martin's Air Studios since 1964.

"Our role was more like that of an A&R man. We picked the songs; that was our major responsibility."

Burgess claims that the Mann group, one of the most musically advanced at the time, objected to most of the songs he selected as their singles, as if their integrity was being compromised.

"I should think they disliked every one until we started recording Bob Dylan songs."

Mann refutes that but does concede that his Jazz and Blues background initially made him disdain Pop music.

"But as soon as the Beatles arrived," he says, "it was obvious there were some good things happening."

Many of the English producers were so thoroughly unversed in the recording process, that according to the Animals' Eric Burdon, producer Mickie Most "didn't even know how to overdub. (Bassist) Chas Chandler had to show him how to work the four-track." And legend has it that Rolling Stones producer/manager Andrew Loog Oldham was once ready to walk out of a session with the tape under his arm — not realising it had to be mixed, a task left to engineer Dave Hassinger.

The British production style was radically different from that of American producers, who buried songs under string sections or chirpy female backing vocals. George Martin, who always recorded the Beatles cleanly and simply, was continually upset by Capital Records' practice of remixing the records for America, adding dollops of reverb and the dubious 'electronic stereo.'

Most of the recordings were on two or four tracks. "You went in and sang the song while you put down the music," says Gerry Marsden, leader of Gerry and the Pacemakers. "If you cocked it up, you had to do the whole bloody thing again."

No overdubs?

"Well, I suppose you could have, but back then we usually didn't bother."

Just as mid-60's US artists such as the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and Paul Revere and the Raiders were often supplanted on their own recordings by session players like Hal Blaine, Joe Osborne, Carol Kaye, Leon Russell, Glenn Campbell, et al, London had its own thriving studio scene. Peter (Herman) Noone claims that several Hermits records actually featured one-half of the future Led Zeppelin: guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones.

"We played on at least 80 percent of the records," contests Derek Leckenby, "although when we moved into the more orchestral songs like There's a Kind of Hush, Jones would arrange the strings and play bass." Because of the minimal tracks, "instead of overdubbing the same guitarist 25 times like you do today, if you wanted a big guitar sound, you simply gathered a lot of musicians. There were sessions where it was me, our other guitarist, Keith Hopwood, Big Jim Sullivan, Jimmy Page, Graham (10cc) Gouldman and a few others, all playing guitars."

But many of the groups, particularly the Beatles, the Stones, the Dave Clark Five and the Kinks, stressed autonomy, playing on their own records (although drummer Bernard Purdie claims to have subbed for Ringo Starr on several Beatles' recordings, which Starr denies vehemently) and writing the majority of the material as well. As evidenced by the many '70s and '80s covers tune, it was a golden age for songwriting.

Not every band may have played on its early records, but it had to be capable enough to perform them live. Playing live, laughs Leckenby, meant tolerating the intolerable.

"Monitors? No, none at all. When we'd play an outdoor stadium, they'd set up this little PA system with four 10" speakers on either side of the stage. And that would be miked through the public address system over which they make announcements at baseball games. It was awful."

Television appearances were generally live, not lip-synced, though few of the producers and technicians took the bands seriously. The Searchers' Mike Pender remembers having to debut on the Ed Sullivan Show in America with his guitar unplugged because a stagehand hadn't bothered to connect it.

"It was a bit soul-destroying after having come all the way over from England."

The Searchers' jangly guitar sound has been adopted by hundreds of groups through the years.

"You hear it in a lot of today's music," fender says proudly, "like A Flock of Seagulls. My kids bring the records home and say, 'This sounds a bit like you, Dad'." What sounded like two 12-string guitars he reveals, was actually two six-strings, with John McNally's Hofner Club 60 detuned slightly. Today the group plays Aria and Rickenbacker guitars.

Both Searchers guitarists used, and still use, Vox amplifiers. Along with Rickenbacker guitars, they comprised the predominant guitar-amp combo of the era, both made fashionable by The Beatles.

"Vox amps have a lot of clarity to them," says Jim Wilmer of Rose-Morris, the distributor. "You can still get good overdrive with lots of harmonics, but without the dirt."

Dave Edmunds and Style Council's Paul Weller are recent Vox endorsees.

Rickenbacker, meanwhile, recently reintroduced the 325V '59 and '63 six-string electrics, played by John Lennon; the 360-12V '64, a George Harrison-style 12 string electric; and the 4001V '63 Paul McCartney-type bass, later popularised by Rush's Geddy Lee and Yes's Chris Squire.

"We had a tremendous demand for a recreated instrument that was authentic to the original," explains Rickenbacker president John Hall, adding that most of the parts are originals discovered when the company's warehouse was being cleaned out. The Rickenbacker is noted for its distinctive, chime-like tone, and today's players include Tom Petty, the Pretenders, Joan Jett and REM.

In those early years the guitar came to prominence as the primary soloing instrument. Most songs contained a four or eight-bar break, frequently restating the vocal melody line on the low strings. There were exceptions: The Dave Clark Five usually featured Mike Smith on harmonica, or eschewed the solo altogether; keyboardist Alan Price was The Animals' most capable soloist. But, on the other hand, you had The Yardbirds, in which the lead guitarists (Eric Clapton, then Jeff Beck, succeeded by Jimmy Page) vied for the spotlight with singer Keith Relf.

Sadly, despite their numerous innovationsand their landmark music, few of the '60s bands survived the 1964-66 years, and even fewer received any substantial royalties. Most fell victim to nefarious management or ironclad recording contracts.

"We were just green lads from Liverpool," says Mike Pender, "so we got ripped off." The Yardbirds lost their catalogue to former manager/producer Giorgio Gomelsky as part of a contract settlement.

Despite the paucity of financial reward, many of the groups can be consoled by having been part of a movement that demonstrated Rock's unlimited potential and by having left such an enduring legacy.

"You can hear it today," observes Derek Leckenby, "not so much in the sounds, which are very electronic, but the melodies and their structures are very similar."

"I listen to a lot of the new music," says Gerry Marsden, "like Duran Duran, Tears for Fears and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The kids are bringing back nice melodies with good lyrics, which is what we used to play. It's great to hear them doing it today."

"We didn't see it coming," Mike Pender says of the musical revolution heralded in the spring of 1967 by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's and the Monterey Pop Festival. "We had our own distinctive sound and style, which is very hard to change. But music changes all the time.

"In retrospect, we probably should have changed with it."

But 23 years after the group's formation in Liverpool, 42-year-old Pender, John McNally and the "new" Searchers — bassist Frank Allen, a member since 1964; and Billy Adamson, their drummer of 14 years — not only continue to tour regularly but are soon to ink a new record contract. "

"That's what we're concentrating on," says Pender, "trying to have success again with new material." The Searchers' last opportunity came in 1979 and 1981, with The Searchers and Love's Melodies. Both albums sounded totally modern, and that they didn't sell spectacularly was a disappointment, Pender admits.

"We thought it was the best stuff we'd ever done, actually," he says, but adds optimistically that whenever the Searchers play contemporary clubs like London's The Venue, "we play eighty percent new material, and it goes down real well. The only old songs we do are Needles and Pins and When You Walk in the Room which the kids love; they stillstand up today."

The key to his longevity, says 44-year-oid Manfred Mann, is that "I'm not dependent on my own songwriting as the source of the band's creativity, I'm an arranger. "

Over his 21-year career with the Manfred Mann group, Chapter Three, and since 1971, the Earth Band, Mann (born Michael Lubowitz) has shown a talent for picking material. Through his career he's covered the Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil song Do Wah Diddy Diddy which became a worldwide number one, and also had hits with compositions by such writers as Bob Dylan (The Mighty Quinn,) and Bruce Springsteen (Blinded by the Light).

On the early singles, Mann played a Vox Continental organ through a Vox amp. "Later," he recalls, "when we could afford someone big enough to move it, I went to a Hammond, as well as an electric piano. "Mann recently retired the Minimoog he'd employed since the early '70s and on last year's tour, his keyboard setup included a Yamaha CP70 electric piano, a Yamaha GS1 synthesizer and a Korg CX-3 organ.

"I always look forward," emphasises Mann, currently at work on his 22nd LP. "In terms of new keyboards, technology, how to record, I'm always trying to use it in different ways."

Considering that Led Zeppelin began as little more than the Yardbirds under a different name and with slightly ruffled feathers, it's quite plausible that had the original Y'birds remained intact beyond July 1968, they would have ascended to a similar fame.

"The timing of our breakup was so bad," Jim McCarty says in retrospect. The Yardies had albums' worth of visionary ideas but were confined to seven-inch singles for most of their 1964-68 recording career. If only they'd been able to foretell the album-oriented era just around the corner...

McCarty, who moved onto the ground-breaking Classical-Rock outfits Renaissance and Illusion, is presently in rehearsal with Box of Frogs, the Yardbirds reunion band making surprising headway on foreign soil.

"I suppose it is a bit of a shock," McCarty admits. Probably because the group — originals Chris Dreja, Paul Samwell-Smith and McCarty (singer Keith Relf died in 1976), and new vocalist John Fiddler — made no concessions to current musical fashions on its album, graced by ex-Yardbird Jeff Beck's guitar on four tracks.

"We had the idea a couple of years ago," explains McCarty, "so we decided to get together at Jeff's and have a blow." They were originally going to reinstate the Yardbirds name, "but we decided it'd create too many problems."

McCarty, who used Ludwig and Premier kits during the Y'birds' salad days, is now playing Gretsch. Dreja, who became a successful commercial photographer (snapping the group shot on the back of Led Zeppelin's debut LP), plays a Gibson Les Paul through a Marshall amp. And Samwell-Smith, producer of Cat Stevens, among many others, uses an old Fender Jazz bass and a Portaflex bass amp.

McCarty says he's tickled by the homage still paid to the Yardbirds by succeeding generations of musicians. And with Box of Frogs, he's hoping that, for once, he, Dreja and Samwell-Smith will be right on time instead of ahead of it.

The hits — 18 in just three years — may have ceased 17 years ago, but there's still enough of a demand for Herman's Hermits that they spend seven months per year on the road.

"We've been very fortunate," says guitarist Derek Leckenby, now 39. "We've managed to keep working for a long time, and wherever we go we're generally well accepted" — even though he and drummer Barry Whitwam are the only originals left. (In a bitter legal dispute, they wrested the group name away from vocalist Peter Noone 10 years ago). Bassist Karl Greene quit the grind four years ago to go into business, and guitarist Keith Hopwood runs a 24-track studio in the bands Manchester home town, where the Hermits recently cut several tracks for release in Australia.

"I'd love to come back," says Leckenby, in the middle of a US oldies tour with Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy Kramer, the Troggs and Badfinger. "I'm not sure how much the record business wants us, but I'd love, to yeah."

Leckenby is still playing the same 1961 Fender Esquire guitar that he bought at Manny's in New York City ("for 75 dollars!") in 1965. "And I still have the Twin Reverb amp Fender gave us when we first came over to America." Asked if he's irked by the stigma of playing the nostalgia circuit, Leckenby replies adamantly, "I don't feel put down by it, no way. I'm having a good time entertaining people, and if I can still do this when I'm 50, I will.

And after all these years," he chuckles, "I still haven't got a real job yet."

The Animals were the group most profoundly influenced by America's black bluesmen. White most pop acts wore tidy suits and sang coyly about wanting to hold your hand, the raggedly, unkempt Animals' first hit, House of the Rising Sun was about a New Orleans bawdyhouse. Other British bands covered Chuck Berry; The Animals, from working-class Newcastle, essayed John Lee Hooker.

"We were filthy back then," Eric Burdon, 43, recalls in his thick, guttural accent. The group enjoyed 14 hits between '64 and '68, including We Gotta Get Out of This Place, It's My Life and San Franciscan Nights, by which time Burdon was leading a new band of Animals (the final version included Andy Summers, later of the Police) and ardently endorsing psychedelia — and psychedelics.

Original keyboardist Alan Price was the first to leave, for a successful solo career; bassist Chas Chandler produced and managed Jimi Hendrix and Slade; drummer John Steel worked for Chandler's management company; and guitarist Hilton Valentine recorded an obscure 1969 solo LP. The original five have regrouped three times: at a 1968 Christmas show in Newcastle; in 1976 to record the unassuming but satisfying Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted; and last year, for Ark and a major tour that was recorded for the recent Greatest Hits Live.

Though Burdon was reasonably happy with the 1983 tour, when asked if the Animals might reunite again, he laughs acridly.

"No way. The axe is firmly embedded in the skull, and the body's already decomposing upon the leafy grave." Besides penning his memoirs for a book due this summer, the singer plans to record his first album in 10 years in 1985.

Gerry Marsden is so remarkably good-natured, whether on stage or while doing an interview around the hotel pool, that you believe him when he says he casually accepted the fact that his string of hits had run out by 1966.

"You can't do it forever," he says in his lilting Liverpool accent. "I was pleased we had a few years of it." After breaking up the Pacemakers, who included his elder brother Freddie on drums, Marsden acted on London's West End stages and in television, hosting a variety programme for several seasons. But after playing a reunion tour in 1973, he decided to return to music and has toured eight months out of every year since 1975.

While many oldies-circuit acts reek of desperation, guitarist/vocalist Marsden plays with the same enthusiasm he had two decades ago, backed by a tight, baby faced group ("The drummer's young enough to be me son," he chuckles). Now 42, Marsden plays a Gibson Les Paul and recently recorded an album of songs by John Lennon and Pau! McCartney.

"When we were 13, we had a skiffle group together that played around Liverpool. And when the Pacemakers had our first hit, we toured with the Beatles and Roy Orbison. "It was that single, How Do You Do It? which furnished Marsden his greatest career thrill.

"It was when Brian Epstein, our manager, called me up to say it'd gone to number one. Brilliant!"

And what of the reaction of the Beatles, who'd been offered the Mitch Murray tune but passed on it?

"They were very sick when they heard the news," Marsden laughs.