CHAPTER EIGHT: Breaking the Who.

     As I went up on deck, there was Jerry throwing some of our old discarded records into the ocean. They would fly like a frisbee. Every week we would receive hundreds of LPs and 45s. Only a few were worth playing. It use to amaze me how much poor music was released. If we were lucky, five percent would be good. We enjoyed this sport of seeing them fly across the waves. Sometimes we could make them skim like pebbles.
“Here, let me have some” I said as I took a pile of 45s. And then looking at the label, I said “Hey, you can't throw this one away.”

‘Anyway Anyhow Anywhere ©Brunswick Records 1965

“Which one is that?” asked Jerry.
“This is that new group called the Who” I replied.
“Let me see. Oh that's trash.”
“No Jerry, I like this one.” I read the label. “I Can't Explain. Yeah. I want to play this on my next show.”
“Be my guest. Everyone else thinks it's trash. I mean it's just a bunch of noise.”
“Good noise!” I said. “It's got great energy. It's got that ‘let-it-all-hang-out’ feeling. I'm tired of all this ‘nicey-nicey’ music. I guess I'm a rebel at heart.” (By April of 1965 I Can't Explain reached number 8 in the charts.)
     We flipped a few more records into the sea then I said “Okay, Jerry. Mike wants us to look through a pile of new releases. He's up in the lounge.”
     In the lounge, on the table, were piles of records. I took one and played it on the turntable. We all listened to a bit of it.
“Good one!” Neddy said. Everyone agreed. That one went in the ‘Yes’ pile.
I played another record.
“Naw!” was the general response. That one went in ‘No’ pile.
And so it went on, with most records going into the ‘No’ pile, a few into the ‘Yes’ pile and some into the ‘Maybe’ pile. We also had our own favourites pile, our personal choices. This ritual was carried out whenever new records came on board.

Tom Jones being interviewed by Caroline South DJ Robbie Dale

     It was the beginning of 1965 when Tired Of Waiting For You by the Kinks, The Last Time by the Rolling Stones, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by the Animals and It's Not Unusual by Tom Jones all arrived on board. With these we were all unanimous: these should go in the ‘Yes’ pile. If it hadn't been for the offshore radio stations, many of these records and many of these artists would never have been heard. Jay Thomas, on Ed Sullivan's Rock 'n' Roll Classics said “In 1965 the release of his (Tom Jones) first single It's Not Unusual was considered too hot for BBC radio. So a pirate radio station called Radio Caroline broke the song in Britain.”
     Later that summer another Who record appeared and again there was a “No!” from everyone.
“I like it” I said.
“How could you like that?” asked Mike.
“It's just a lot of noise” said someone else.
“Anyway Anyhow Anywhere” said Neddy, reading the label. “No way, not now, not here. Huh! And they're call The Who. Weird name.”
“Okay, you guys, I like it. I'm going to play it on my morning show.”

The Who's 1967 album ‘The Who Sell Out’ which included offshore radio jingles and spoof adverts. ©Polydor Records

“Cheers!” said someone. “How about another beer?” said someone else and then one of the guys ran down to the shower room and came back and started spraying us with shaving foam. We ran out onto the deck and the chase was on. Someone climbed the mast and someone else grabbed a rope and swung down from an upper deck. And when the night came, we walked around the deck holding a fluorescent tube high in the air and, because of the strong radio power coming off our mast, the tube would light up. We were the Jedi warriors before they had been invented.
     A few weeks later, I had just returned from my week's leave on shore. Mike greeted me from the tender. I said “Guess what Mike? I just heard. The Who's song Anyway Anyhow Anywhere has reached number twelve. Great eh?”
“No accounting for bad taste, you know.” We laughed. And as we walked into the lounge, I caught up with the gossip on board and told Mike of my exploits ashore. How we now had eight million listeners and Caroline House was a buzz and how some man from the government had tried to issue a writ to Radio Caroline and was told that there was no such thing, because we were run by four different companies registered in different parts of the world and none of them was called Radio Caroline. We laughed. Sat in the lounge and had a beer.

©Tom Lodge 2002