representative of a Stockholm-based Agency in Sweden, EMA. He was delighted to meet Paul again after so long, and delighted to hear of the excellent live fortunes of the band. He immediately set to work putting together a tour for Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets, in Sweden. The band had been abroad for just a few short visits before, and that year alone had completed two TV spots for a German company. This was to be their first lengthy period away from home, however. The first gig was in a town called Bastard. And it was. The band were to play before and after a disco at the hotel, where they were also booked in to stay. Swedish teenagers dig rock tn' roll to a certain extent, but they weren't all that interested in the advent of Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets to their little town. They had never heard of them, and most of them preferred pop. In the event, there were only about four people at the disco that night. The band played appallingly. Shaky was so miffed that no one recognised him, he was quite a star in his own small circle back home, and yet here were these rotten foreigners refusing to even clap. He drank heavily, far more than he could handle (which wasn't known to be much) and eventually got so completely out of control that he launched himself with all his angry force at the DJ, whom he blamed for the night's fiasco. Unfortunately for him, he fell onto the expensive record deck and broke it irretrievably.

Paul spent some time pacifying the furious DJ, agreeing to forgo part of their fee for the night and somehow managed to drag Shaky upstairs. On some nights Paul and Shaky shared a twin room so that Paul could keep an eye on his young protege's drinking habits. On this particular night, Shaky went wild. First he tried to get into bed with Paul, not for any illicit purposes, it seemed, but more to annoy. When Paul threw him angrily out, Shaky started throwing bottles around the room, smashing glasses, shouting and making as much furor as he could.

The band, in the meantime, weren't doing much better. One of them proposed to a maid who frantically barricaded herself into a wardrobe, where she spent the night sobbing and refused to come out. It was one of a series of fiascos on that tour which culminated on a live TV show where they appeared with afro-jazz-funkers Osobisa. George Chick, the wild bass player, decided to take things to a characteristic extreme on this occasion and spent the entire time that they were on the air supposedly playing, rolling on the floor with his legs in the air. During the guitar solo the cameras zoomed in for the close-up of this exciting over - the-top Englishman, and then someone noticed, his guitar wasn't plugged in! What intelligent Swedish viewers must have made of this blunder is anyone's guess.

During their stay in Sweden, the band cut a few tracks in the recording studio for Jerry Williams, a kind of Swedish Tommy Steele character who Paul figured was worth adding to their list of working acquaintances. Gerry was putting together another one of the inevitable rock tn' roll compilation LP's and was only too pleased to have the British Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets as special guests. The album wasn't released until the following year, but when it did it featured the band on no less than three tracks: "Sweet Little Sixteen", "Nut Rocker" and "Holy Moly". The album, which was called "Rock Rivalerna", did quite well, and although they hadn't negotiated themselves any royalties from it, it served its purpose in deeping the name of the band alive in Sweden. It was during 1972 that the Sunsets were joined by their most memorable Sunset, who went by the nickname of "Twizzle". His name was Tony Britnall, and he was a fabulous saxophonist who, before joining the Sunsets, had been having a run of bad luck, like he'd been in the Fortunes, but left just before the made "You've Got Your Troubles", and had, then spent some time with Jigsaw just when their agent decided to try them around the never-ending cabaret circuit. Twizzle needed an outlet for his tremendous energy and showmanship, and he wanted to play rock 'n' roll, so Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets seemed ideal for him. Soon after he joined, guitarist Willie Blackmore decided that he'd had enough of the low-life, so off he went to be replaced by Ian Lawrence.

Willie was a competent guitarist, and was good for the Sunsets when they needed him, but he definitely lacked the kind of zip that Ian's guitar-playing brought to the set, Ian was one of the Chuck Berry school of guitarists, so towards the end of '72 the line-up of the band was: Shakin' Stevens on vocals, Rockin' Louie on drums, Ace Skudder on piano, George Chick on bass, Twizzle on saxophone and Ian Lawrence on guitar, together they produced quite a show.
It was during the autumn of '72 that a man entered the lives of Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets with ideas which were to produce a quite devastating change in their careers. His name was Cyril Van Den Hemel, a tall good-looking Dutchman with long brown hair and an electric manner who was later to join forces with the famous rock biz manager Miles Copeland, working on such seventies names as Wishbone Ash, Curved Air and Renaissance. At the time he was approached by Paul Barrett, Cyril had just formed a production company called Tulip, and an European Agency called Europop which acted as a channel for British acts wanting to work on the continent.

He knew what his countrymen would like, and in this case his judgement was spot on. Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets took to the Dutch roads for the first time in February 1973, and again in April, May, June, July, August and November. For the first time in their lengthy career, they looked set to break big. Their first record, called simply "Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets' had a stark, black and white cover and it sold well.

Released in Holland on Dureco Records, it didn't find its way into England for several years, and even then it was imported via the rather strangely roundabout route of Emerald Gem Records in Ireland. The success of Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets in Holland during this time was partly down to their incredible live show, at their best you could have matched them against any band of their day and received a favourable impression. At their worst they were still a bag of laughs, and it's worth noting that whereas England had suffered Shakin'Stevens and The Sunsets visiting Holland - 1970from an excess of rock 'n' roll for many years and even in the early seventies could pick and choose between a few dozen names on the circuit, in Holland the band were unique, no one else had tried to follow them there, at first. And so in the August of that year, they played at the important Emmen pop open-air festival on a bill of acts which included Argent, but as the stars of the show, and they earned the almost phenomenal fee of 800 pounds. Bearing in mind their comparative stances in this country, its not surprising that Argent were furious to be placed below this upstart little rock 'n' roll band, and sent out some very heavy vibes throughout the afternoon. Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets ignored these as best as they could from the comfort of their star-quality back stage caravan. It had been ..drizzling all afternoon, and the festival site was a mass of muddy people, all sheltering under plastic sheets and macs, not exactly ideal live conditions for them, but when they went on stage someone in the sky decided to give them a break, and the sun began to shine. It was a tremendous gig. George Chick, complete with the longest guitar lead in history, managed a superhuman leap from the twenty foot stage into the audience below where he played an almost manic set rolling in the mud. Twizzle, in the meantime, showed his superb skill as both a showman and a saxophonist as he boogaloed with two instruments, a tenor and a baritone sax slung across his body, swing each one to the front as he needed it but at the same time leaping and cavorting across the scaffolding above the stage, achieving stunts of amazing acrobatic agility .

Twizzles was a lunatic, though, something which was to cause problems with Shakin' Stevens in later years. His stage antics were hard to beat, some nights, and Shaky didn't like being upstaged. On one occasion that same year the band played a rock 'n' roll night at the Greenford Hotel in London and Twizzle decided to have some fun during the set, blowing flames out of his mouth with lighter fluid. It was spectacular, but there was lighter fluid all over the stage and it wasn't long before the ivory keys of Ace Skudder's piano caught fire. Shaky felt the need to top this piece of madness, and spotting a light fitting above his head, he jumped up onto the blazing piano and literally threw himself onto the light fitting, swinging out over the heads of the excited audience. Unfortunately for him the light fused and sparked as he swung dangerously and some of the sparks landed on the beautifully oiled elephant trunk hair of a fan at the front of the stage, instantly igniting it. So with a blazing piano, sparks flying from the ceiling and an audience left desperately patting the head of one of their ailing comrades in an effort to save his hairdo it was a hell of a gig, even the encore was a let-down after that.

for the over-the-top image of the band, but Shaky didn't like it, not one bit. Perhaps because of their on (and oft) stage excesses, Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets began to find themselves the sought-after- pets of the elite. May Balls became a regular - and well- paid - part of their annual round, although they were always booked to appear at five o'clock in the morning, when all the beautiful hairdos and tuxedos of the Oxford and Cambridge students had begun tt;) wilt and eyelids had begun to droop.

The band rarely failed to please at one of these events, however, even though the predominantly upper-class students could do little to endear themselves to the communist Paul Barrett, to whom remarks like "what price Biafra' made by youngsters in Etonian tails holding champagne glasses made little impressions. They tried, at these hallowed (and expensive) events, to keep the greasy, filthy bands well apart from the tuxedoed masses by shutting them in separate tents with crates of beer to keep them quiet. On one occasion, however, Paul decided with the help of a fun-loving pub rock group the Kursaal Flyers to make a small protest. Dressed in a set of tails provided from the Kursaal Flyers wardrobe, he walkedstiffly from their rear-stage tent and, with the help of a stolen tray spent a fruitful half hour pretending to be a waiter, collecting up as many bottles of champagne as he could find and marching them back to the safety of the dressing room, where they were all drunk with relish, while the crates of brown ale were left untouched. It could well have been at one of these gigs that they were seen by Ken Tynan's daughter and booked without delay for her twenty-first birthday party, which was to be held at the Young Vice Ken Tynan, now sadly demised, was a famous theatre critic of his day and was also the man who first used the word "fuck" on television and was therefore something of a hero to Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets, who were only too delighted to play at his daughter's birthday party. All the big names of the day were there, jiving to the band with obvious enjoyment - like Liza Minellli, Frankie Howerd, Peter Sellers, Kenneth Haig and even a wonderful man who had made a name for himself during the thirties making movies with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey and who had been hounded out of Hollywood during the commie-bashing period. Finding an instant fan in Paul, he confided to him that he was feeling particularly miserable on this night because his wife had made him promise not to drink, undoubtedly for some very good reason which Paul didn't waste time trying to find out. Together with Rockin' Louie they hid themselves behind the long velvet curtains at the side of the stage and spent a few happy hours reminiscing about the good old days of Hollywood. Then the producer suddenly heard a familiar sound - it was his wife, calling his name and heading towards the curtain where she must have heard increasingly raucous noises emitting, as Paul and his new friend got increasingly drunk together. The producer rose to his feet in a blind, drunken panic and grabbed the curtain, which immediately came down around him and sent him rolling down the stairs to his wife's feet. Paul made his excuses and left the scene as quickly as he could.

It was that same night that a famous lady authoress took a fancy to Shaky. She approached Paul first. "I just love your singer," she told him, "he's got so much energy" Paul introduced the sharp, intelligent and not unattractive lady to Shaky but stood close by to aid the social situation. It wasn't long before she was inviting Shaky back to her luxurious home in Chelsea for a post-show nightcap. Shaky wasn't too sure if he should accept the offer. "Chelsea? He queried, "would we make it all the way to Chelsea tonight?" Paul stepped in quickly and put his hand on Shaky's shoulder to silence him. "She means Chelsea mate, in London " Shaky had never done geography at school, of course, but Paul was banking on the lady authoress being not too curious. Eventually Shaky agreed to return to Chelsea for a nightcap - but only, he insisted, if the Sunsets would be allowed to go with him for company. The lady couldn't have known what she was letting herself in for that night as she took an entire rock 'n' roll band back to her beautiful home, paid for by the sweat of her pen. They were there all night -Paul and the Sunsets lounging around her living room while she took Shaky upstairs to "have a chat".

telling, they reckoned. "Well then, how did you get on with her?" they asked him eagerly. But Shaky couldn't be so easily drawn. "Well, actually I ' reckon she was trying to kill me," he replied, hesitating. "Why else would a lady like her want to get me all on my own like that - I kept my distance all night, I can tell you - although we did have a good long chat ".
Shaky's first child was born that year - Jason. Carole would have been pregnant at the time of the incident and it's actually quite likely that he really did just spend the night talking with this "clever" lady who would have impressed him greatly with her learning and intelligence. Although still very much the same ladies man that he had been throughout his youth, and although he still loved to be surrounded by beautiful women, fidelity to Carole was still important. Fatherhood appealed to him - as the product of a large family himself, he naturally hoped and expected that his own family would be a large one. Carole had faded completely into the background, however. Rather like his own mother, she expected no more from her husband than that he provide her with the most basic and traditional desires of womanhood - a home and a family. They had moved out of their strange flat in Westgate Street earlier, when the council finally decided to demolish it in favour of a more modern office block. They were now living back in Fairwater, a slightly upmarket council estate on the outskirts of Ely, in a maisonette, 11 Frewer Avenue. In a small circle of pebble-dash council houses, the Barratt family made themselves a home. And there they stayed - Carole rarely going out, except to the local shops or, in later years, to the local play group with Jason while her husband cavorted through the venues and recording studios of Europe.

She had learned to live with it. In October 1973 Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets went to Denmark for the first time, touring and staying in the chain of Trust-House Forte style motels owned by Esso. The motels displayed large "Esso" signs outside their frontages, and it was into one of these solid objects that the Sunsets' roadie Jimmy Connell drove, one drunken night, leaving a large head-size hole in the roof of the van. October was a cold month and soon the band were complaining of the terrific draught caused by this hole - rain and snow could have come through and killed them all off, they complained. Eventually Paul - being the tallest of the motley bunch - was forced to stand with his head in the hole and the hood of his parka pulled close to block the gap, making for an unusual entrance to many of the gigs – he looked like a tank commander, and was ribbed accordingly. It was one of the night that he was riding in this style when they pulled up alongside a hapless Dane to ask directions to a club called the "Revolution". "Where's the Revolution?" called out Paul in his best tank commander's voice. The Dane gazed at him for a moment, and then grinned.

"Try the American Embassy," he quipped. Paul like him. Going drinking in Denmark can be a hazardous experience, even for a rough bunch of rock 'n' rollers. On one particular night they decided to try some of the pubs by the dock in Copenhagen, their own docks back home held some veritable treasures for the hardened drinker. But there are some rough joints in Copenhagen, like Casablanca meets real life and backs away. The band tried quite a few, but although they were thirsty, they just didn't dare hang around for too long in most of them. Eventually they found a place which was completely empty, and breathing a sigh of relief, ordered beer all round. What they didn't know was that they were about to experience the strongest beer in their entire careers as semi-alcoholics. It was called "Elephant's Export" and it had a kick just like the monster it is named after. A few of those and the band were happy, boy were they happy. They decided to pub crawl back to their hotel, through all the joints they hadn't dared to enter earlier. The docks of Copenhagen couldn't have known quite what hit them as Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets cavorted through their darkest dives, dancing on tables, spilling beer, acting out silly playets and doing terrible impressions. How they survived in one piece is anyone's guess. What is certain is that not one member of the band made it back to the hotel. The next morning found them - very ill- two in the back of the van, one in the park, one in the doorway of the hotel, one half-way up a tree and one on a parked bus.
It was a fairly riotous tour all round, another night George Chick was found in the early hours of the morning in a doorway, clutching the remnants of a crate of Danish beer, and claiming that he hadn't been paid the previous night, insisting, even. When they traced the story of the crate of beer, the fate of George's wages soon became clear, he had drunk himself to oblivion with them. Soon afterwards, Rockin' Louie found himself celebrating his birthday, far from home. They had just played a gig at an exclusive club, and in their dressing room aftenvards were a group of Danish trendies - the men with golden jewelry to match their tans and the lovely women looking as if they had just stepped out of the pages of a high-class fashion magazine. Suddenly Louie announced that it was his birthday, and asked the giggling girls if they would do something special for him to mark the occasion. Without a word of warning, he stood up, pulled down his trousers and dropped to his knees, baring his hairy posterior to all. "Beat me, beat me, it's my birthday!" he cried, and when that didn't produce an exciting enough result for his taste, he began to make pig noises and cavort around the room. The assembled guests made their excuses and left. They were never invited back to that particular club again.
The end of 1973 was also the end of the line for George Chick. He was an excellent bass player, if not totally dedicated to rock 'n' roll any more. He was also extremely good- natured and a good driver, a good mechanic, a good sound technician. So, while Paul did the wheeling and dealing, Rockin' Louie, Twizzle, and Ian got drunk and Shaky fought off the local beauties, George got put upon to do most of the dirty work. In December he drove non-stop from Stockholm to Belgium in the van. It had been a hard year for all of them, and nerves were frayed. They had been over the Channel so many times they had lost count. Fame and success sur-Ie-continent were all very well, but the price seemed high just then. George having driven non-stop for forty-eight hours from Stockholm, was just getting ready to jump out of the van and leave them in the middle of Brussels to find their fate without him, when Paul spotted a little light down a dark side- street. It was a tiny hotel which had walls pitted with bullet holes, from the last war, they hoped. Imagine their relief when a kindly old gentleman welcomed them in, offered them warm rooms, food, showers and comfort, and didn't even bat an eyelid when Paul explained that he didn't have any Belgian Francs with him, only Swedish crowns until the morning. "That's OK." Said the old gentleman, obviously with an honourable past to work on.

"You are English, therefore I trust you." They paid the man in full the next day, after a blissful night in his hotel, and rebooked for the following night. It was unfortunate that after their gig that evening they were followed back to their hotel by a group of enthusiastic fans with loud mopeds and blue caps - Gene Vincent fans, no doubt, who proceeded to demonstrate to the kindly hotelier that Englishmen might be OK but rock 'n' roll bands are a race unto themselves. It spelled the end for George, though, and the Sunsets lost a good man when he left, he had introduced, at Paul's suggestion, a string bass to the set a little while earlier, and even though he had broken it irretrievably by riding it across the stage at Leicester Polly, it had placed the band light years ahead of their peers, including Crazy Cavan.
George was replaced by Malcolm Priest, a fresh-faced rockn 'n' roll freak from the valleys around Cardiff who fitted without too much difficulty into the lifestyle of the band, although it was his first taste of professional music-making at this level. Ian Lawrence left soon after George, he had become increasingly interested in the steel guitar throughout his time with the Sunsets, and felt that now was the time to make a fresh start with a new, less hard-rock outfit. To replace Ian, Paul brought in the intelligent Mike Lloyd Jones who first saw the band early in 1974 playing a gig at the Greyhound, in London. Mike hadn't been too aware of rock 'n' roll until then - he was fairly young, and his musical education covered the whole spectrum of the establishment music of the seventies, the Beatles, Genesis, Lindisfarne and soon. Lloyd was a Cardiff-based musician, and had always assumed that Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets were a Pernarth-based outfit, because the main publicity-man, Paul, based the Sunsets operations from there. He had know Paul for some time, on the Small Cardiff music scene, and had respect for him as a manager. So when Paul approached him in the Greyhound and suggested that he might like to cut off his shoulder-length locks and join them as a rock 'n' roll guitarist, he readily agreed.

He like what he saw that night - Shaky and Twizzle were doing their usual competitive wild exploits, climbing around the Greyhound beams as they completed the set, and Mike thought that it might be fun to go out on the road properly, not just the one-nighters which were all his own band had hitherto been able to scrape together. His first gig with the Sunsets confirmed his dreams, he was paid a whole 8 pounds, and he was assured by Paul that this was a bad night. In his previous band it would have taken as many as sixteen gigs to earn that much. So when he got into the van at the end of the night and witnessed what he was as a stupid row between Paul and Shaky over 50p, he was a little puzzled. What Lloyd hadn't realized was that Paul and Shaky had been close companions for five years now, and 50p between friends at the end of the night can mean a lot.

It was a herringbone coat that sparked the angry words, Paul had bought himself a large herringbone coat in a jumble sale for just 50p, to wear in the cold van on the way to and from gigs. He hardly had a chance to wear it, however, Shaky always got into the van first and put it on quickly before he could grab it. On the night of Lloyd's first gig, Paul grabbed Shaky by the collar of his herringbone coat and said "Right, Shaky, you pay me the 50p for the damn coat and you can have it." Shaky, always careful with his money, refused, where upon Paul pulled the coat off his shoulders and threw it out of the window of the moving van. Lloyd tried to remonstrate with them, without success. "Look guys, you just earned eight quid, if the coat means that much to you I'll pay the 50p and we'll keep it as a communal coat." But both Paul and Shaky just turned and glared him to silence. He soon learned not to interfere with petty politics and arguments.
Throughout 1974 the band capitalised on their success of the previous year in Holland, as well as continuing the round of well-paid one-nighters in England. The inimitable Twizzle left during the spring to join a band called Long Tall Ernie and the Shakers-a Dutch copy of the Sunsets which had been put together out of two bands who had actually supported Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets on their first ever Paradiso date! Twizzle hadn't been getting on with Shaky for quite a while, he knew of the boy's jealousy towards his excesses, but it just wasn't in his nature to tone them down for the sake of Shaky's tender ego. Twizzle is actually the biggest success story of all the Sunsets, he remained in Holland with Long Tall Ernie for some time, but then turned his hand towards producing and writing. Last reports from Twizzle have him heavily involved in the production of the "Stars on 45" singles and a major name as a pop producer of the eighties.

It was quite a hard life, though, both physically and mentally. Sometimes the band had to travel hundreds of miles to a gig and then set up their equipment and play, but they could never allow themselves to just play, it always had to be to excess. The band all travelled together in the van at first, but this soon became impossible as nerves and the clashing of personalities built up on the longer tours. It wasn't too much fun in the van, although for Shakin' Stevens and the sunsets it was home for months at a time. They tried to make it as comfortable as they could, each musician or roadie would bring his own favourite armchair and wedge it as best as he could ~longside the others, some of which, like Rockin' Louies's and Paul's, had been there for quite some time.

Around each armchair would be the little world of each different person, stuffed in every nearby nook and cranny were personal belongings, notepaper, books and blankets. Each man guarded his own territory jealously. The van was rarely cleaned out, however, and the floor was invariably littered with dozens of empty beer cans, fried chicken boxes and greasy chip bags. When the band swung round a hard bend, all this litter would roll noisily between their outstretched feet. It was pretty unbearable for any length of time. It had its good moments, though, like the time Rockin' Louie brought a Buddy Holly book with him to read on a long journey to Glasgow. He started reading in Wales, occasionally glancing up and exclaiming some fact of interest he'd just read. Gradually he was persuaded to read aloud and many hours, cans of beer and hundreds of cigarettes later he finished, croaking and re-faced -but they'd hardly noticed the long drive that time. Eventually they split up and got themselves to gigs in their own cars, Shaky had a good source of old bangers provided by one of his many brothers-in-law, but that caused problems in itself. On one particular trip to Sunderland they managed to get through two vans and a car, and arrived two days later, losing money. On the way back they hired a mini-bus which Shaky drove while they slept. Unfortunately the hard week had told on him and he, too, fell asleep at the wheel. The van careered off the motorway and turned over- and they were lucky to survive. With their guitars and their suitcases in the hands and over their shoulders, they walked into the nearest town, which was Doncaster, and hailed a cab. "Where d'ya want to go?" asked the driver. "Cardiff," they chorused, collapsing exhaustedly into his back seat. It cost them a week's wages between them, but by then they didn't care- they just wanted to go home. They didn't always drive straight home, though - sometimes they would stay overnight in a local bed and breakfast. Finding good hotels in any country is hard for a band. They keep such unusual hours - most hotels close at midnight and stop serving food long before that, so that a tired and hungry band returning in the small hours after a long gig is unlikely to find satisfaction. Often the band returned to their hotel at six o'clock in the morning only to find them- selves being turned out at nine, after just three hours of sleep. Some hotels understood, however, and looked after them well, remembered with affection is the motherly Polish hotel manager who would wake them up after a long sleep with the words, "Three eggs or four?" The hotel which the band usually stayed in when they played London gigs was a small, friendly hostel in Paddington which was lovingly called "the mad pad".

It was here in 1974 that Paul had to break the news to Shaky of his father's death, he'd received a call from his wife Lorraine the night before, saying that she'd just been told of Mr. Barratt's death by Carole, who never knew where to contact Shaky, a situation which occurred again when Shaky's first daughter, Paula, was born during 1975, it was Lorraine again who tracked them down. On this first occasion, Paul kept the news about Shaky's father from him overnight, he wanted to be in a position to put him straight on a train home within minutes of telling him. Knowing Shaky's emotional nature, he couldn't risk just blurting it out at the wrong moment. The morning after the gig, Paul led Shaky from the "mad pad", down the slope towards Paddington Station, saying that he wanted Shaky to come with him while he checked the train times. "I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you, from home," he said. "You won't be doing tonight's gig with us." Shaky took a little while to comprehend what Paul was trying to tell him, but when it eventually sank in he collapsed against the wall, weeping. Paul practically carried him and put him onto the train home, calling his wife to arrange an understanding escort for Shaky when he arrived in Cardiff. Shaky had been very fond of his father, who, dispite an original press release in later years describing his status as 'miner', was actually a foreman on a building site. He had always encouraged his son in his stardom fantasies, but had been unwell for years with a heart problem which occasionally confined him to bed. He would have undoubtedly enjoyed his son's present day success.
Shaky cut a single on his own in Holland during 1974, that year the band were spared any major recording projects. The single was "Lonesome Town", all Shaky had to do was go in the studio and lay down vocals for a backing track which had been pre-recorded by session men for Dureco Records. A well-placed TV appearance in Holland at the same time ensured that the single actually reached the lower rungs of the charts. Dureco followed these up immediately with a couple of very flat versions of "Spirit of Woodstock" and "Honey Honey", a rewrite of "Money Honey". Neither of them did very much, though, so the live work continued, still with as much zest as before. That year the band blew a couple of big name stars off-stage, like Gary Glitter, in Hamburg, and again in Germany the same year, when they did a German TV show with Lindisfarne and stole the show. They got into the heady position of being able to do political or charity gigs for expenses only at one stage, they appeared at a massive event at Alexandra Palace in North London which went under the title of "the Moving Left Show" where they were much appreciated. They also played for the Cardiff University Iraqi Society where they were assured that the proceeds of their would go to buy arms for the PLO, students in those days had some imaginative ways of spending their grants, for sure. In Amsterdam politics were not forgotten, Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets played a massive benefit for" Amsterdam Help Hannoi", which was basically an anti-Vietnam gig. The band opened up with a rock In' roll version of the "Red Flag", which they called "Red Flag Rock", explaining it to the assembled throng as the English labour song. One burly union dock worker, overwhelmed by the performance of this song, jumped up on stage when it was all over and shook Shaky's hand so enthusiastically that he broke his finger! Shaky had to wear a special metal brace for several weeks afterwards, and was not amused.
In 1975 Dureco Records in Holland asked Paul if the band would cut another album for them. Paul refused at first, they hadn't seen any royalty statements from the last album and when pressed about them, record company officials gave vague answers. He reckoned that he could do without the extra hassle. But rather than turn them down out of hand when they returned to him a second time, he said, "OK, if you really want us that badly, put 2,000 pounds on the table - now." To his amazement they did just that, and paid all the production costs and expenses themselves. It was the biggest sum of money ever seen by the band since the beginning of their career. It also gave them a much needed shot-in-the-arm creatively. The album was going to be totally conceptual, Paul visualised it as the Sergeant Pepper of the rock In' roll world. He came up with the title "Manhattan Melodrama" which, quite deliberately, was the name of the movie that John Dillinger had just been to see when the G-men gunned him down, back in the thirties. The idea behind the concept was to link the outlaws of the thirties with the outlaw music of the fifties, like, if John Dillinger was alive in the fifties, maybe he'd have been a rock 'n' roll star instead of a bank robber. It was no big heavy deal, one side of the album had songs penned by Paul and the Sunsets, around the "outlaw" theme, while the other side was straight rock ‘n' roll themes.

The track listing of Side 1 was:

01 - Manhattan Melodrama
02 - Alan Freed
03 - California Cowboy
04 - Lady Lizard
05 - Punk
06 - Outlaw Man

While the track listing of Side 2 was:

01 - I Told You So
02 - Longer Stronger Love
03 - Like A Teenager
04 - Holy Rollers
05 - No Other Baby
06 - Get Back John

Unfortunately, things started to go wrong almost immediately when the band just weren't allowed enough studio time to achieve the results they wanted, the producer still expected them to go in and do everything in one big take, like he was used to doing with rock In' roll bands. And yet this was the mid-seventies, a time when bands were indulging themselves in marathon studio sessions lasting up to a year or more. Such a luxury was not to be afforded for Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets.

A few of the tracks which were intended to go on "Manhattan Melodrama" never actually found their way onto the vinyl at the end of the day, and have been released since on a Sunsets Productions LP. The producer of "Manhattan Melodrama" was Schell Shelvekins, who had apparently been a small cog in the great organisation that mixed David Bowies's "Diamond Dogs" album, part of which was recorded in Holland, although it was mixed in the main by Tony Visconti, David Bowie and Keith Harwood, "Diamond Dogs" was a claim to fame for Shlevekins, however, and he didn't let the band forget this during their recording time. "You leave it to me," he told them, "I'll mix the record for you, when you return you'll be amazed." The band went away, confident in his ability and aware that even if they weren't, Dureco were still calling the shots, and didn't return for a whole six months. In the meantime Schell mixed. And mixed. And remixed. He put in flutes where there should have been a sax, he put in synthesisers, and he took off the hard edge that the band would have produced even in their worst session. "It sounded fuzzy," comments Paul. "We were disgusted." The album cover wasn't much to their taste, either "I wouldn't have packaged potatoes in that cover," winces Paul. The album was released in time for the Christmas rush, but it died an instant death. It was so bad that Emerald Gem in Ireland didn't pick up on their option to import it. And so that was it. It had been a long, hard, grueling period on the road, they'd had their chance at the big time but it had kicked them right in the teeth. Relationships in the band had deteriorated badly by the beginning of 1976, the little things that a band on the "up" will laugh about suddenly became in their eyes the cause of their failure. Mike Lloyd Jones started to become overly annoyed with Shaky's hours spent in the bathroom. It had been a source of jokes before, they had all seen him practising his Elvis Presley lips endlessly in the van, and he'd long had the nickname "Norman" which stemmed from his appalling Norman Wisdom impersonations which he insisted on bringing up with the beer, but there came a time when Paul couldn't shield him any longer from the bad feeling caused by his self-obsession. There came a point which Rockin' Louie recalls during that low period when Paul himself found reason to give Shaky the tough facts of life. Shaky's temper, along with everyone else's, was at breaking point. Already that night he'd swept a table of full drinks with his arm in an almost hysterical gesture, when they were going through their date sheet. "The same bloody venues again, " he'd shouted. Later on, Louie heard him in Paul's hotel room, voice strained and raised. "I should be a star by now," he raged, "Six years on the road and in the studio, why aren't I a star?" Louie heard Paul's voice, also strained and slightly raised, trying to explain that these things often involve lucky breaks, and being in the right place at the right time. "I still say that your time will come, if you just keep plugging away, and I'll plug away with you, Shaky," he said. But the rising star wasn't to be so easily pacified. "What about Dave Edmunds, if you'd have let me stick with him back in 1970 I'd be a star by now, at least he believed in me!" that was enough for Paul. All the years that he'd been shielding Shaky from the truth about the Rockfield Studios episode to save his feelings, he couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "I'll tell you something Shaky, and I want you to listen and take this in, Dave Edmunds was interested in Louie, not you, it was Louie that he wanted as vocalist on everything on the "Legend" album that was worth anything!" when Rockin' Louie walked past the open bedroom door he saw Shaky on his knees at the foot of Paul's bed, with his arms outstretched and his face buried in the covers, sobbing.

There were several incidents with Shaky after that which indicated his depressed state of mind, and which can't have helped him into 1976. The first was at a small venue in Birmingham which had a tiny box stage with a DK stand slightly raised to one side. Half way through the set, the band noticed that he'd disappeared off-stage and was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly there was black objects flying towards the audience, it was Shaky, in the DK stand, throwing all the records out either at or to, it didn't seem to matter much at the time, the audience. Another depressing gig took place soon after in a small club in Chester. There was a chandelier hanging above the stage which Shaky decided to take a dive at during one of his songs. It collapsed, and so did half the ceiling plaster. That time he really brought the house down. The amount deducted from their fee at the end of the night meant that they'd gone all the way to Chester and back (from Cardiff) and received not a bean. It didn't seem fair. Shaky kept up the charm, though, all the Sunsets respected him for that. While they were lolling in the dressing room making love to a crate of beer before each gig, Shaky would change into a pair of black jeans and a black bomber jacket and go out and "Mingle" with the audience. He was like the ambassador of the band, it was good for him to be treated with a\ve by his audience, it undoubtedly gave him the kind of confidence and the mood that he still needed to be in before he could go on stage, but it was also incredibly good for the band, no one would ever have guessed from Shaky's smiling features that they were at the end of the road. Mike Lloyd Jones remembers an occasion in Holland when the most incredibly beautiful girl approached Shaky, as usual, one night after a gig at the Paradiso. Shaky disappeared with the girl, a lovely blond with a large beauty spot on her cheek, and didn't return for several hours, until Lloyd and the band had gone to bed. Suddenly Lloyd woke up, with Shaky standing over him still in his stage gear. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. "Hey c'mon Lloyd, there's a party to go to, that girl I met tonight has agreed to wait for us with her friend, only I don't want to go on my own. Come with me and let's make it a foursome." Mike considered carefully for a minute. "If I don't go with him," he pondered, "he'll come back in a few hours saying it was wonderful, they could be giving away fivers and Les Pauls." So he got up, dressed, and went out with Shaky in the van. They got to the appointed place and waited. And waited. The girl didn't show up. To add insult to injury, when they finally decided to go back to the hotel, the van decided not to start. It drizzled. "I should have listened to my mum." Mike commented to a furious yet silent Shaky. "She always told me, "Mike, when you're out on the road don't go offgalavanting until all hours of the night, it'll do you no good, you just go straight back to the hotel and curl up with a good book, that way you'll come to no harm", I think she might have had a point."

The band needed a new source of energy, of that there was no doubt. Towards the end 1975 Paul Barrett met a keen rock 'n roll fan called Peter Meulenbroeks who owned a small record label called Dynamite. He offered Paul some studio facilities which were about as basic as you can get, Paul almost expected to see cave drawings around the walls, but he also offered the band a chance to get back to basics and have some fun. It was like a breath of fresh air. They also got themselves slightly away from the purist rock 'n' roll format, to include some rockabilly, because in 1975/6, thanks to bands like Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers, rockabilly was becoming a force to be reckoned with on the scene. Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets had been aware of rockabilly since the days of "Down on the Farm" and indeed, had been using a string bass in their show three years earlier, but now here was their opportunity to think about it a little more closely and to see what it could do for their music.

A word, perhaps, should be spared here for Crazy Cavan, who had taken over from Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets as the number one teddy boy band during their absence in Holland. Back in the early sixties Paul Barrett became friendly with a Newport teddy boy called Breathless Danny Coffey, whose gang met up with Paul's at Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins and Sam Cooke gigs. There was a certain amount of rivalry between them, although they eventually became firm friends and Paul frequently visited Danny's house in Newport to listen to his extensive record collection. Danny was, in fact, the first man to pick up on Sun Records in Europe, he visited the company in Memphis when it was hardly known here and picked up treasures for pennies. So Paul and the Backbeats were able to hear rockabilly records that they hadn't heard in the fifties, and which hadn't been heard out to the Southern States. Danny had many followers in his circle, and some of these were young boys who eventually became Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers.