My First LPs

The first album that I bought was a second hand copy of Here’s Little Richard. I adored it and played it to death. I remember at a school fete where we were asked to put on a fund raising stall. I took my Dansette in and was a Juke Box for the afternoon. I only took one album in and that was Little Richard, but I played it non-stop all afternoon and made a pound or two. It was an excuse to play the stuff I loved extremely loudly.

I soon followed that first album with Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly. I extended out to Elvis Presley and the first Cliff Richard ‘Live’ album.

The first new album I bought was The Shadow’s Greatest Hits in summer 1963. I loved the Shadows and had all their singles. It seemed the logical choice. I wasn’t to know that no sooner had I bought it that it was destined to become part of the ‘old sound’. It was blown into the past by the Beatles.

After one hearing of the Beatles Please Please Me album I was hooked. I rushed out and bought it. For a full year Merseybeat was it. Then it was British Beat with the Stones, Kinks, Who, Yardbirds, Animals and Pretty Things. I still have all the singles and albums. But I craved for the slightly out of the ordinary so I had The Downliners Sect, Birds, Sorrows and Bo Street Runners. I felt that this was my music. This was as if a knife had sliced it off from everything that had gone before. This was mine.

I loved albums.

I rushed home to my bedroom with my latest purchase, put side one on the Dansette and while it was blasting out, to the distant sound of ‘turn that down!’ futilely coming from my mum and dad in the living room, I avidly digested the front cover photo and all the writing and songs on the back. It was a total experience.

LPs were sacred. They were a complete package of art, information and music aimed only at me. I absorbed them with the rapture they deserved. They were the total immersive experience.