Ready Steady - Win!

 

The announcement of  ‘A New Beat Competition’ with a first prize of £1,000 of new equipment, a recording contract, an appearance on ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ AND a chance of a ‘one nighter’ tour with some of Britain’s top recording artistes meant Rediffusion offices were instantly flooded with over 4,000 requests for entry forms. One of these came from Brian, John and Mike who were honestly never expecting to hear anything again until an application form actually arrived not long after. But it wasn’t quite so straight forward as they’d thought – the form needed to be sent back with a recording of an original unpublished track with a very trim two minute maximum length….Whilst The Harbour Lights and bands all over the country found themselves scrabbling to write a winning original track, back at the Redifussion offices they were waiting for the flood of entries. Two weeks later the records arrived – six of them! 19 year old Gay Singleton, who had been chosen as a host along with ‘Ready Steady Go!’s Michael Aldred, had together set up a complex filing system to

 

deal with the expected acetate Tsunami– at this point it was looking like it wouldn’t even get it’s feet wet! They needn’t have worried though, from week three the number of entries rose to 50 a day and by the closing date over 800 completed entries had arrived, among them was “I’ll miss you” by The Harbour Lights. 

Brian with Gay Singleton on 'Ready, Steady - Win!' set

Weeks went by and the band heard nothing – this was probably because Executive producer Elkan Allan, Francis Hitching Editor of Music Programmes, Peter Croft the director of ‘Ready, Steady - Win!’ and the rest of the team had over 26 hours of home made songs to listen to!!

Eventually when they heard they’d been asked to an audition at Blackpool, they knew it had to be done right – this was a once only opportunity. John Lee takes up the story...

“Imagine the scene, our roadie Chad set up Mike’s Harbour Lights logo emblazoned Super Classic drum kit flanked on either side with two Vox AC30s on shiny chrome stands. Brian’s gleaming Gretsch Tennesean sat opposite my immaculate Hofner Beatle Bass and as a final touch, four or five feet in front of the drum kit on a guitar stand was a 6 square foot picture of the band! It looked stunning. Can’t remember how many bands were there that day, but when it came to our turn we walked out in matching suits, shirts and ties - nothing was left to chance.”

 

Less than 10 percent of groups made it through the auditions but Brian, John and Mike’s confident display had ensured they were through and on their way to the televised heats which ran from June to September 1964. The band had chosen a cover of The Four Pennies “Miss Bad Daddy” to play in their heat along with “I’ll Miss You” - the combination were delivered flawlessly. There were only ten heat winners who went on to the semi finals and only six from these would go on to the Grand Final to be judged by Brian Epstein, Bill Haley and Brian Matthew – and the three lads from Cheshire were one of them!

 

 

The Harbour Lights rehearsing at 'Ready, Steady - Win!' studio

 

The final was broadcast on 16th September 1964 and ultimately was won by The Bo Street Runners. The Harbour lights came in 5th, just shy of the £750 Comer Van and £250 worth of clothes, which ironically they could have done with….When the band had caught a flight down to the Wembley TV studio earlier they left their shirts at the airport after being distracted by Tommy Cooper and were subbed £5 to go out and buy some on the night by Cathy McGowan. Despite their moment of fame, the office manager of Rediffusion made sure their feet were kept firmly on the ground when requesting immediate repayment of the ‘loan’…..

An album produced by Mickie Most, featuring all the heat finalists original entries from the show, including 'I'll Miss You' was released on Decca. Long since deleted it's almost impossible to get hold of these days and actually worth a bit of money - sadly, neither Brian, John nor Mike have a copy! - but you can listen to samples of The Harbour lights tracks on the CD page.