|
This shot of the Mascots with the 'Save
the Pirates' caption was in the second edition of Beatwave magazine.
Although different from the newspaper clipping sent by Per Alarud, it
is obviously one of a series of photos taken that day.
The picture appears in Beatwave with nothing
to indicate the band's name, or the fact that they were from Sweden –
which gives the impression that the editor had no idea who these guys
were, but liked the photo and decided to use it anyway!
|
The
Mascots – aka the Beatwave 'Save the Pirates' Group
Per Alarud wrote from Sweden:
I enclose an old newspaper cutting of the Swedish pop group Mascots
outside the Radio London office.
I asked Brian Long a couple of years ago if he knew anything about
this visit, but he had no idea. Maybe the photo is just a publicity
shot? Many pop groups at the time made visits to the offshore stations,
in order to became famous. The Mascots were very popular in Sweden during
the time of Radio Nord.
The text underneath the photo just gives the name of the members of
Mascots: Anders Forslund, Roffe Adolfsson, Gunnar
Idering and Stefan Ringbom, outside
Radio London office on land. The Big L T-shirts that they wear are the
Kenny Everett design from 1967, so it can be assumed that the picture
was taken in the summer of 1967.
July
2005 update from
Håkan Widenstedt in Sweden
(Sadly, Håkan passed away in March 2011)
Hello Chris and Mary,
We met back in 1999 on the Big L reunion in Clacton on Sea.
"I was reading about the Mascots on one of your Mini-memory pages.
They were one of the leading bands in Sweden during the 1960s. I got
interested after reading about them on your page, so I wrote to Anders
Forslund, one of the band members. He is still part of the music scene
in Sweden. Here is his answer about their visit to Radio London:
'The Mascots made a so-called package tour together with the Bluesbreakers
with Peter Green. Should be around 1967. On that tour was also Earl Richmond, one of the Big L disc jockeys. Later he made us a fantastic strong meat stew in the home
of our manager at the time, Lars Dalenius in Sollentuna [Stockholm].
Mascot visited also on one occasion the radio ship in the North
Sea. I remember that we were given cigarettes, a whole carton of cigarettes,
each one of us and we sat in the stern of the ship and each of us
took a drag on a cigarette and then we threw the cigarette into the
sea. That's how "Free" we were :) !'
It is possible that Stefan Ringbom remembers more. He is on the
web."
Webmaster's note:
Thanks to Anders and the late Håkan, we have a first-hand update on the story from a group member,
which along with the Big L teeshirt design, would confirm the year as '67. We hope we may eventually
hear from Stefan and perhaps other  members of the Mascots.
Earl Richmond's involvement with the tour
explains how the two Radio London visits were arranged. Earl had left
the Galaxy in 1966, but continued to be associated with Big L and the
station's School of Broadcasting. We do know that the band appeared at a Big L Night at the Nautilus Club, Lowestoft on March 25th '67, hosted by John Edward. alongside Three Good Reasons and The High Tees. Three Good Reasons had been in the Fab Forty twice in 1966, the first time vying with the Settlers for a hit with their cover of 'Nowhere Man'.
See a clip
of the Mascots performing their 1965 release 'Sad Boy', and looking far
more Beatlesque than they do in the Curzon Street photos. An English translation
of the history of the Mascots, 'the boys who played pop music in the evenings and studied Beethoven and Bach during the day' is here.
It reveals how they felt when they played support to their heroes, The
Beatles. Anders Forslund has his own website here |
