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Which musicians have lived on your street ?

The Bee Gees went to the school on my road and lived nearby.

Barry Gibb still owns their family home on Keppel Road. Last time he was in the UK he knocked on the door and asked the current renters if everything was OK and if they needed any work doing or anything mending to let him know. I think there’s some news footage of it on YouTube. It was probably an excuse to go back and remember the old days.

When the Bee Gees went back to visit the school in the 80s there were kids in the playground queuing up to take turns on a pair of rollerskates. They bought all the kids a pair.

I love these sorts of story. In the pre-social media days they were genuinely done without any expectation of recognition for it.
 
Van Morrison has a house just down the road in Coney Island and I paved around a place in Crawfordsburn Country Park years ago , a big old grand house divided into apartments, the owners list read like a who's who of NI 'celebrities ' including Van, Eddie Irvine, etc, I've probably worked around more famous people's houses than I lived near though.
 
About 1970.. there was work going on at the bottom of our street. I got a few days there on a tunnelling project. So it was technically (almost) in our street, that I met Alvin Lee's Dad... who was a site engineer.

Just around the corner, lived two brothers.. who were schoolmates of mine. One is sadly deceased, but they both formed a band in the early 1960s, along with another class mate called Richard (Rik) Kenton..who played with Roxy Music for a while. Meanwhile, the surviving brother played with various bands including a stint with the bloody awful Paper Lace..and the manufactured band 'Highly Likely', who toured the hit theme song from 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads.' He's still doing session work etc.

More recently, I have an almost neighbour (well about a mile away) who is a fine musician in the Irish tradition. He is well acquainted with Mary Black and her family, including Shay who I've met and sister Francis, who I haven't. I think I've recounted before, the tale John told me of when he was in a Dublin pub with Mary, Shay and others. He was sitting next to an American girl in the company and asked her if she 'played at all'. She replied that she sang a little. Much to John's embarrassment.. she turned out to be Linda Ronstadt.

Again.. not on my street, but around the corner.. my English teacher in school was a Booker Prize winning novelist.. Stanley Middleton.. who was also a fine church organist.

And of course during the latter years of my employment as a Career Adviser.. I worked in offices in the former 'Beecham Building' in St Helens, where I daily passed the bust of Sir Thomas Beecham, noted conductor and son of the Beecham Pills family.

220px-BeechamsBuilding.jpg


FWIW, my office was directly under the clock tower on the top floor, with a great cast iron support pillar for the tower, somewhat dictating exactly where I could have my desk.
Small world... ;)
 
I grew up in St Helens and know that building well, in fact my father, a teacher, worked in the adjacent building. I went back to recently to visit my parent's grave and was deeply saddened to see the dilapidated state of the building - very sad (and sorry for being off topic).
 
I wouldn't worry too much about being off topic.. we're not exactly thread crapping and I'm sure others won't mind a minor diversion.

That's an old pic Caliente and it took me a while to understand which direction it's looking. I've concluded that so long as it isn't 'flipped' it is looking from Water Street, towards Westfield Street. The cobbles date the pic to well before my time living near St Helens. I haven't been near there for at least a couple of years.

Thing is that Beecham became part of..I think, 'Smithkline-Beecham', and then Glaxo Smithkline. (or thereabouts.) Throughout my 30 years of Careers work, mostly in and around St Helens.. I never knew them to show the slightest interest in St Helens as a town. The Beecham Building became a sort of 'community asset' after SKB pulled out of St Helens, though I don't recall the full details. St Helens Career Services was absorbed into Greater Merseyside Connexions around that time, and we occupied part of the building, which was next door to St Helens College, where I also spent a lot of time. A glass 'atrium' was built onto the side of the building .. out of the shot above.. with glass lifts etc. All very fab and trendy. And then St Helens College underwent another complete rebuild. I've lost track.

I suppose it's possible that I knew your Dad, if he was still working after 1985. I knew many staff and we generally had a very good relationship with the college.
 
My dad taught at Central Modern, but he was moved c.1970 to the junior school (Windle Pilkington?) adjacent to the Beecham's Building as I guess that they had unused space. The school was about 6-stories high and had a flat roof which from what I recall you could easily access, but it had no safety barriers. I used to go up there to kick a ball around whilst waiting to get a lift home.Interesting what you say about the Beecham company, as unlike Pilkingtons, they did not pay much of a role in the fabric of the town.

As a teenager I always though the place was a cultural desert - with a population of c180,000 once you included the likes of Rainford and Newton-Le-Willows, it never sustained a proper rock venue - I couldn't wait to get away! When the book; 'St Helens the Rock n Roll Years' is published it will be a very slim tome indeed. Saying that a friend of mine started to promote bands - primarily at the Technical College where I saw The Enid and Roy Harper, among a handful of other bands, and he also persuaded The Raven pub to have the odd live band such as The Groundhogs. For a while the Theatre Royal seemed to only have a policy of hosting brass bands, but I did see Labi Siffree there and also attended the infamous Hawkwind gig in 82/83 when the stage collapsed due to the number of people on stage - I think that may have ended any more thoughts of having bands perform there? The only other live venue that I recall was the YMCA place, but they never had anyone of note.

Perhaps we need a thread on the rock music scene of the town of your youth!!
 
My dad taught at Central Modern, but he was moved c.1970 to the junior school (Windle Pilkington?) adjacent to the Beecham's Building as I guess that they had unused space.

I didn't move close to St Helens until 1976. I recall discussion of both the schools you mention.. but don't recall them personally. True, St Helens wasn't exactly a cultural epicentre.. but as I've long argued.. the place was somewhat 'stillborn', having only been incorporated as a borough around approx 1870.. by which time Manchester and Liverpool were both easily accessible.. and 'streets ahead'. That said. I do have somewhere.. a 'floppy' vinyl EP of assorted pointless crap by St Helens 'band' Poisoned Electrik Head... who I think were in their 'pomp' around the late 70s..and have since re-formed.. and disappeared again...
'Tellins' had a brief resurgence in the early 2000s..when it seemed that every place which came vacant was turned into some sort of bar.. but even that seems to have gone.... along with Pilkington, Fibreglass, Ravenhead Glass, United Glass Bottles, several coal mines,assorted chemical plants and other delights... including the Lead Refinery where I worked before going belatedly to Uni.

I only tend to visit now for Dentistry and hospital appointments.

It should not be forgotten though.. that cultural icons such as Johnny Vegas.. who I'm sure came into Grange Park Youth Club when I worked there..and Rick Astley..who didn't.. are basically from 'Tellins'.
 
I vaguely remember that Pete Haycock, from the climax blues bands lived in our house many moons ago, in little doxey just outside stafford. Which is apparently why we have such an enormously long garage with a wall through one half of it, cause it was used as a recording studio!

Didn't know this till fairly recently and my grandad mentioned it the once which surprised me! Followed it up with my dad and apparently its true!
 
Nick Cave was my neighbour when I lived in Brighton. I used to see him out and about. I once stood behind him buying french patisseries with his sons and I walked behind him in Waitrose one day. He had some of the lovely Italian vine tomatoes I used to buy in his basket. I am a massive fan. He is as important to me as Leonard Cohen but I never spoke to him. I thought his privacy was important.
 


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