The Transistor Radio Arrives! 1960s Nostalgia!
Transistor Radio at the Wedding is the title of our new Cray 150 book published at the start of 2024. The book explores how 1960s football was reported in newspapers and magazines and on television and radio. Although it is primarily a football book (featuring and remembering great heroes like George Best, Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves, Denis Law and Bobby Moore) there is an important sub-theme that 1964 was a landmark year for radio. The offshore pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline and Radio London began broadcasting in 1964. The small portable transistor radio came into its own, enabling people to listen to their favourite pop music anywhere inside or outside the house ... even (discreetly) at a wedding if it was desperately necessary to know the Saturday football results!
Transistor Radio at the Wedding is the title of our new Cray 150 book published at the start of 2024. The book explores how 1960s football was reported in newspapers and magazines and on television and radio. Although it is primarily a football book (featuring and remembering great heroes like George Best, Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves, Denis Law and Bobby Moore) there is an important sub-theme that 1964 was a landmark year for radio. The offshore pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline and Radio London began broadcasting in 1964. The small portable transistor radio came into its own, enabling people to listen to their favourite pop music anywhere inside or outside the house ... even (discreetly) at a wedding if it was desperately necessary to know the Saturday football results!
Do You Remember Radio Luxembourg?
When did the transistor radio first become a must-have / everybody’s-got-one in households throughout the British Isles?
Many teenagers of the 1950s and 1960s would remember that the transistor radio enabled the ritual tuning in to Radio Luxembourg every evening. It was the station that played the best pop music! [See schedule for February 1963] Frustratingly, the signal faded in and out. There was the proverbial reading a book by torchlight under the bedclothes after one’s parents had ordered ‘lights out’ and a proper sleep before school the next morning. If we furtively switched on the transistor radio, setting the volume as high as we dared, sooner or later the signal would fade so we would turn the volume up … then when the signal returned the music would blare out alarmingly loudly and we would hastily have to twiddle the volume button down again.
When did the transistor radio first become a must-have / everybody’s-got-one in households throughout the British Isles?
Many teenagers of the 1950s and 1960s would remember that the transistor radio enabled the ritual tuning in to Radio Luxembourg every evening. It was the station that played the best pop music! [See schedule for February 1963] Frustratingly, the signal faded in and out. There was the proverbial reading a book by torchlight under the bedclothes after one’s parents had ordered ‘lights out’ and a proper sleep before school the next morning. If we furtively switched on the transistor radio, setting the volume as high as we dared, sooner or later the signal would fade so we would turn the volume up … then when the signal returned the music would blare out alarmingly loudly and we would hastily have to twiddle the volume button down again.
Of course, the innovative and practical delight of the transistor radio was its portable battery-operated quality. You no longer needed somewhere to plug into the mains to listen to the radio. You could take one to school, even? Most schools banned them but you could usually rely on someone sneaking one in so that we could find a refuge out of sight of teachers or prefects and tune in to Tony Blackburn playing pop hits on one of the offshore pirate radio stations that started in 1964. We were, in effect, replicating the Chuck Berry song Oh Baby Doll in which school days are recalled, with a portable radio ‘When the teacher was gone that’s when we had a ball, we would dance and sing up and down the hall.’
This era was made all the more memorable and thrilling by the advent of Beatlemania. Exploding towards the end of 1962 the Beatles became a national phenomenon in 1963 and on into the whole decade. This is where we can perceive a dotted line to football. As recounted in our Transistor Radio at the Wedding book, top football in the 1960s featured a deadly rivalry between two great teams in the north-west. Liverpool under Bill Shankly had star players a-plenty and so did Manchester United under Matt Busby. The Beatles from Liverpool undoubtedly spearheaded the Mersey Beat pop craze that swept the nation but there were plenty more Liverpool bands too, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Merseybeats, the Searchers and the gloriously-named Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Manchester a.k.a. ‘Modchester’ boasted a lively pop music scene too, headlined by Freddie & the Dreamers, Herman’s Hermits and the Hollies.
There was a third phase of exciting 1960s memories of the transistor radio being an ever-present accessory: ‘Swinging Sixties London’ which started sort-of 1965 and 1966 with Carnaby Street and Pop Art but peaked in the 1967 ‘Summer of Love’ featuring the Kings Road in Chelsea, Mary Quant, psychedelic music, etc. This time the dotted line to football was that football suddenly became trendy? Chelsea started to attract a showbiz following of celebrity stars while players at a number of the top London clubs became identified as fashion icons setting the styles. Chelsea players George Graham, Ron Harris and Terry Venables started a West End tailoring business. This wasn’t confined to London bearing in mind that in Manchester a chic clothing boutique named Edwardia was opened by George Best and Mike Summerbee who starred in the forward lines of the city’s two rival clubs.