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Gert
van der Winden
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Machteld
Meijer in 1966...
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...and
today
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I started listening to 'Pirate' Radio, as they called it here
in Holland, in 1960 when I was about 9 years old. My father involved me in 'the
thing' when he listened to our own Dutch radio station Radio Veronica on Saturdays
and Sundays. The programming was of the kind they called Easy Listening.
The record I remember best from this time is 'What Do You Want to Make Those
Eyes at Me For' by Emile Ford and The Checkmates. I still have this 45 in my
collection, but I was not able to buy this until 1965 in a stock sale.
My parents had a big wireless receiver which I own and cherish nowadays. It
is still working but not in use by me at the moment and tuned on the dial to....
of course.... 266.
I became 'aware' of listening a couple of years later in the summer of 1964
when I listened a lot to Radio Caroline, Britain's first commercial 
radio
station. My dad didn't like the kind of 'rough' music he heard, meaning singles
like 'Rosalyn', The Pretty Things and 'It's All Over Now', The Rolling Stones.
But I liked it!
Left – unpopular with Gert's dad, The Pretty Things
A headliner in this time was 'The House of the Rising Sun' by the Animals, which
still gives me chilly fever hearing it. I remember there was a short version
(American edition, a deejay copy) in which they edited the instrumental part
and one couplet as they thought the playing time of the record was too long.
I've not been able to find this particular track till 2002, but a friend of
mine has the 45 in his collection, so here ends my search.
During this time, I started making and writing down my own charts, although
the notes of these have unfortunately been lost. In the evening I mostly tuned
in to Radio Luxembourg as Radio Caroline or Radio City were not too good reception.
Here you also heard the splendid records you heard during the day but also a
great collection of new American recordings.
In September 1964 I got my first very own transistor radio (A Toshiba 8 Transistor)
on which I could get the British Offshore stations loud and clear.
Then, in December 1964, there was Radio London.
From this time on, it became my favourite station. I well remember the start
of test transmissions which was on December 13 or December 14, only for a couple
of hours. Not knowing this would become Big L (as records were being played
non-stop), the choice of music already captured me! The very first songs being
played then were 'I Feel Fine', 'Paper Tiger', 'Cast Your Fate to the Wind'
and 'It Sounds Good to Me'. (I did not know this was the B side of 'Message
to Martha', I thought this was the new record by Adam Faith - kind of like 'The
First Time' and 'We Are In Love'.)
On December 23 1964 there was Big L, starting with Pete Brady. (Only recently
I heard back 40 minutes of this very first broadcast.) I also became a regular
listener of the Radio London Fab Forty (Or the 'sing-along survey' as Dave Cash
mentioned it later). However, I never started keeping notes of the Fab 40, simply
not knowing the importance this would have later.
Then I heard again a well-known voice, the one of Tee Double-U (Tony Windsor)
which I knew already from former station Radio Atlanta, when he did his thing
and played his signature tune 'Rinky Dink' by Johnny Howard. On Radio London,
he used 'Revenge' by Ray McVay.
The summer of 1965 became 'my year'. I liked almost 99% of the records being
played on Big L and in the 'summer sales' I started buying my first 45's although
it was almost a year later when I got my first pick up. By then, I already had
a collection of around about sixty 45's which I played at a friend's pick up,
sometimes borrowing it. One of the first records I bought was 'Eve of Destruction'
by Barry McGuire.
In July 1965, I went on holiday and took my transistor radio with me, but damn!
No sign of Big L in this part of the country till the evening when a very small
and far away Big L was there. But still good music on the radio, as there were
'Long Live Love', 'Woolly Bully', 'I'm Alive', 'A Walk in the Black Forest'
and 'Tossing and Turning', which I picked up from German stations or 'Lucky'
Luxembourg.
I listened to Big L till August 1967. As I was on a holiday during the final
day, I didn't hear the close down 'live', but a friend of mine made a tape recording
of it. Nowadays it seems very much has been taped during these days in 1967,
but from 1965 and 1966, complete or partial shows are hard to find.
By the seventies I longed for the good old days and began tracking down facts
and recordings of Big L and also started to lay hands on records which had charted
in the Fab 40. This brought me in touch with Bert Bossink who was a big Radio
London collector. He supplied me his notes and taped me some very hard to find
(at that moment!) records. He brought me in touch with other Radio London collectors
here in Holland such as Frank van Heerde and Dirk van Dijk.
Fortunately, many things can be found on CD nowadays and also the 'Web' supplied
me many obscurities (such as 'Sweet Love' by The Sons of Fred and 'Whatever
Happened to the Seven-day Week?' by Bella and Me). However, I'm still missing
about 20 records from the entries in the Fab Forty from December 1964 till August
1967.
In the nineties, I bought the manuscript of Brian Long, containing the Fabs
from April 4, 1965 to the end of Big L. I started tracking down charts (or parts
of) before April 4 but, year after year, was unsuccessful until December 2001
when I met a lady called Machteld Meijer during a radio broadcast. She told
me she had kept record of the Fab Forty from the beginning, when she was a teenage
girl and that she still had the notes! Machteld was kind enough to supply them
to me.
It was amazing! The first chart Machteld wrote down was 24 January 1965! However
she had been only writing down the song titles, so I made myself a job in doing
the research, as I have many of the 45's myself and others on CD.
So I compiled the 'Early' Fab Forties as we call them nowadays and added artist's
names, label numbers, peak position in the chart and the number of weeks being
in the chart. This was really a gas to do as it took me back to the good old
days...... Now here are the final (First) charts!
Radio London, still wonderful after all those years..........!
********
Webmaster's note: very sadly Gert died in November 2013 at the age of 62.
The contributions I have made to the Radio London hit parade collection
are the charts of the months February till June 1965. But let me tell you first
how it started.
I was interested in popular music from an early age. I remember popular songs
from the time when I was about 4 or 5 years old; my father used to listen a
lot to the (mostly German) radio, in the living room, in the garage, in the
bedroom. When I was about 10 years old I listened to the few programmes with
popular teenage music on the Dutch radio, and to Radio Luxembourg on my own
radio in my bedroom. I also started buying the Dutch music magazine 'Tuney Tunes'.
That was in 1962. I was especially interested in the song lyrics, I dreamed
of becoming a pop singer and I knew many, many songs by heart. But I studied
chemistry instead! I currently work as a senior consultant in the ICT-branch.
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Click on Machteld's notes to view a larger version
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I remember that I always tried to find the stations with popular music on my radio since then. I lived in a part of the Netherlands where Veronica (our own Dutch pirate station) was difficult to receive. So I stuck to Radio Luxembourg most of the time. Somewhere in the early sixties (I think 1963 or 1964) I started to write down the first hit parades of Radio Luxembourg and the Dutch state radio.
Unfortunately I don't know where I left these notes. In 1964 my brother
and I started to listen to the English pirate stations. My brother used to listen
to Radio Caroline, I preferred Radio London. It must have been in January 1965
(I was just 13 years old then, third grade, secondary school) that I found out
that Radio London broadcast its hit parade on Sunday afternoons. I remember
very well the first time that I was totally ready for listening; it was on January
24, 1965, the day Sir Winston Churchill died, therefore there was no
hit parade. But I managed to find out almost all the numbers during the week
that followed.
During the following months I always wrote down the hit parades on Sunday afternoon.
Then during the week, while doing my homework, I wrote down how often I heard
the songs. For every day I used a different colour. I have scanned the hit parade
of February 7, 1965. Unfortunately my scanner is not able to show it in full
colour, but parts of the page are in colour, so you can get an impression from
that. For instance, I heard the number 4 song ('Keep Searching') twice on Sunday,
once on Monday, three times on Tuesday, twice on Wednesday and Thursday and
once on Friday and Saturday. I only wrote down the titles of the songs because
I knew the artists by heart. Only when the artist was not very well known or
when I did not know the name of the song, I added the initials. For instance
G.P. for Gene Pitney, with 'I Must be Seeing Things', because I couldn't understand
the title right away.