Bobby Elliott - It Aint Heavy, Its My Story: My Life in The Hollies

Copyright 2020 Omnibus Press

(A Division of Music Sales Limited)

Cover designed by Ruth Keating

Picture research by the author

Artistic liaison: Steve Lee Vickers

ISBN: 978-1-91317-220-6

Bobby Elliott hereby asserts his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with Sections 77 to 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages.

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of the photographs in this book but one or two were unreachable. We would be grateful if the photographers concerned would contact us.

Designed and Typeset by Evolution Design and Digital Limited, Kent

Printed in the Czech Republic

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Sue

You rescued me when I was down, your smile lit up the room

At last I saw the future, sunlight cutting through the gloom

You caught me as I fell and we floated on the breeze

Life is just so easy now we can do as we please.

B x

I stood in front of New Yorks world-famous Paramount Theatre and drank in the sight. Here we were, right in the heart of theatreland in Times Square, about to perform in the theatre designed to showcase the best of Paramount Pictures and now a top-notch live performance venue. We had made it to the States.

Stars like Ginger Rogers, Rudy Valle and Bing Crosby had performed in this theatre. It was here that the crowds had danced in the aisles to Benny Goodmans music, with the great Gene Krupa on drums, and here that the bobby soxers had squealed and cried over Frank Sinatra.

As the heavy stage door closed behind me, I skipped up the short flight of concrete steps leading to the elevator. It was then that I heard raised voices. The sight of a group of theatre staff fronted by a tubby New York cop, pistol drawn, stopped me in my tracks.

Those little white girls out there love me.

It was Little Richard. And he was in real Tutti Frutti tantrum mode.

The police officer appeared agitated and was now sticking the loaded weapon into my heros neck. It was tense.

Hold still or Ill blow your fuckin head off! ordered the officer.

Undaunted by the cold steel being poked into his jugular, Little Richards outpourings continued in a sort of running-on-the-spot fashion. I was witnessing a serious incident, a surreal tragicomedy. Was I on a film set? Would someone shout: Cut?

The Hollies 1963 Liverpool Cavern contract for lunchtime and evening performances.

B ritain had been at war with Germany for over a year. My father, Bob Elliott, and his best friend, Ted Shaw, approached the saloon bar in the Talbot pub and ordered a couple of pints of locally brewed Masseys ale. There were many similar watering holes dotted around Burnley, a small cotton mill town which nestled, along with Nelson and Colne, in the shadow of Pendle Hill in Lancashire, not far from the Yorkshire border. Tall chimneys, each of them close to 300 feet high, dominated the landscape, belching smoke and cloaking the town in smog and grime. Far below were thousands of clog-wearing weavers, each of whom operated eight or sometimes sixteen clattering looms in the mills. The noise was deafening and they communicated with one another in sign language. Despite this, they were a cheery bunch of folk who lived mostly within walking distance of the stone-built mills known locally as sheds in street after street of small terraced houses.

In the pub that night there was a modest celebration. I had just been born at the nearby nursing home and my dad and Ted had been to see mother and baby. As the beer flowed, the pub wireless crackled out the news that Japanese torpedo bombers had attacked the US Pacific fleet lying peacefully at anchor in Pearl Harbour, killing thousands of US sailors and servicemen. It meant that the Americans had been drawn into the conflict, resulting in a full-blown World War II. Throughout his life, my dear father would remind me of this fact every time war in the Pacific was mentioned.

Pearl arbour thats when you were born, Robert.

Actually the attack happened on December 7, Pacific time, but the news reached the British public the following day.

As the evening ended the two revellers drank up and made their way up Ormerod Road, past the College of Knowledge (as Burnley College was always known), over the Leeds to Liverpool canal by way of Godley Bridge, along the iron railings that skirted Thompson Park and Queens Park, and along the Ridge that looks down onto Turf Moor, the towns football ground.

Those railings are still in place today, but sadly most of the ornate Victorian metal fencing had been cut down in 1940 to be turned into tanks and guns to fight the Germans. Well, that was the plan. The good folk of Burnley watched helplessly as fences were torn from their little terraced gardens by men armed with oxyacetylene torches. Throughout the country, churches and public buildings were shorn of their wrought iron glory. At the time the people of Britain were told that the metal would be melted down to build war-winning munitions. But their sacrifice was in vain. Part-way through this act of vandalism, our leaders were informed that it was the wrong sort of metal. What the arms industry really needed was quality Sheffield steel, not wrought iron. The nation had been duped but, keen not to lose face, the authorities carried on picking clean our crafted heritage, even though they knew it was not fit for the purpose. In a final desperate act of deception, the national stockpile of plundered railings was secretly dumped at sea under cover of darkness and the general public, none the wiser, carried on proudly believing that they had helped to win the war by donating their ironware.

Dad and Ted couldnt see much as they headed for Pike Hill, an elevated suburb on the towns outskirts. It was the age of the blackout. Hitlers Heinkels and Dorniers were in the skies looking for somewhere to drop their lethal high-explosive bombs. To thwart this threat, every streetlight in the country had been turned off. Vehicle headlights were covered and blackout cloth was fitted to the windows of every household in the land.

Home was 13 Chiltern Avenue, a modest semi-detached house where Dad lived with my mum, Edna. I was to be their only child. Dad was thirty-two when I was born and Mum was five years younger.

Dad and his brother, Jack, were master cabinet makers; they crafted hand-built furniture. Their company letterhead proclaimed: H. Elliott Furniture Manufacturer. It was a family business, inherited from their father, Hartley Elliott. I never knew my grandfather. He died, penniless, eight years before I was born, leaving his two sons in debt and saddled with a crumbling rented building that dated back to the industrial revolution and was equipped with ancient woodworking machinery and not much else. It seems that Hartley had been a colourful character, always immaculately dressed, who spent most of his life playing chess with local, wealthier businessmen in the Mechanics Institute. He had grand ideas and he liked to show off. As a young man, hed had a furniture factory built in nearby Nelson, complete with a high-mill chimney. When the work was completed, rumour has it that Grandad performed a headstand on top of the newly erected smokestack.