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WHEN Cliff Richard received his knighthood, many thought his backing
group deserved a gong or two as well and preferably at the same ceremony.
The Shadows (for it is they) had as many hit records on their own as they
did accompanying their immortal front man.
OBEs arrived for Bruce Welch and Brian Bennett almost ten years later in
2004. Hank Marvin turned his down - but that's another story.
Using the past tense in talking about them is irresistible because they
began their assaults on teenage pop fans in the late 1950s, though both Sir
Cliff and his former sidekicks are still around to recall their heydays.
If they needed reminding that their contemporary fans are still with
them, they only have to visit the South Wales Shadows Club.
While members know the records and are happy to sit and listen, the club
is primarily a collection of musicians who pay their respects in kind by
plugging in and letting rip - if one can do such a thing with a musical
style that was a sedate world away from guitar-bashing, frantic `licks' and
the wilder shores of rock 'n' roll.
In fact, there is scope for musicians to present their own versions of
Shadows hits, a certain pointer to the staying power of the originals.
Imitation is easy (well, easy-ish); cover versions demand devotion but much
less genuflection.
If you were 16 when The Shadows negotiated the charts in 1958 with Move
It, you are now in your early sixties, just in case you hadn't realised or
wish to divert attention from the fact.
Thus, club members are mostly of a certain age, but with
an increasing number of younger people wanting to discover the music for
themselves. So what's the attraction? "
... as John Lennon said, `No Shadows, no
Beatles'," The Shadows and Bert Weedon were probably the seminal
influences on people who wanted to play the guitar in the 1960s, whatever
way they developed afterwards. The guitar is a portable instrument and
becomes accessible. Bert Weedon said you could learn the guitar in a day but
spend the rest of your life mastering it. He was just about right.
Hank Marvin, the Shadows lead guitarist, created deceptively simple
music, not necessarily music you would want to dance to but certainly the
kind that encouraged young people to buy a solid guitar and try to emulate
him.
Shadows personnel changed over the years and two members, bass players
Alan Jones and Brian `Liquorice' Locking, the club's president, have played
at the Club (when Brian actually performed on harmonica).
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